Every English council must publish every payment it makes over £500 — the raw chequebook. This is the unique reference number each payment carries in the council's ledger. It matters because it is what proves two similar-looking payments really are two separate payments rather than the same one listed twice — without it, duplicate-payment checks can only guess.
| name | transaction_id |
|---|---|
| dataset | 11-transparency-code-spend |
| kind | extracted |
| type | string |
| unit | ledger identifier |
| grain | transaction |
| role | join-key |
| source | "Adur & Worthing: Transaction_ID; Gloucestershire: Transaction No; Sefton: none" |
| period | monthly publications (sample: March–June 2026 files) |
| missingness | "Absent entirely for Sefton; three-council sample only, so availability must be checked per council. Where present it is council-local, not globally unique." |
| score_note | Absent for Sefton; valuable only as a de-duplication aid. |
| peer_group | council class (district / county / unitary / metropolitan / London) — not yet scored on the leaderboard |
The council ledger's identifier for the payment, where published. It de-duplicates rows and distinguishes genuine repeat invoices from duplicate entries in the duplicate-payment construct. Sefton publishes no transaction ID, so its rows cannot be de-duplicated against the ledger and duplicate candidates there will over-count; identifiers are also only unique within a council.