Policies

Editorial policy

What this site is

AI DOGE publishes what public bodies in England say they spend, from the files those bodies publish themselves. Every figure on the site traces to a document a council or other public body put on its own website, and each page names the document it used.

The site is independent. It is not affiliated with any council, government department or public body, and no public body has any say over what appears here.

Who publishes it

The site is published by Tom Pickup, a private individual. Tom is an elected county councillor for Padiham and Burnley West on Lancashire County Council, sits in that council’s cabinet as Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care, and is a member of Reform UK.

A reader of a site that covers Lancashire County Council and measures every council in England the same way needs to know that. It is declared in the public register of interests, we say it on every page rather than leave a reader to find out, and we manage it in the following ways.

How the conflict is managed

1. The same automated rules run for every council. There is no manual override for any council, including Lancashire County Council, Burnley Borough Council, or any council run by any party. The rules are published on the methodology page and the code that applies them is published with the site.
2. No council resources are used. The site is built and run on privately owned equipment and accounts, in private time, with no council officer time, council data access, or non-public council information. The only Lancashire County Council material on the site is what the council publishes to the public.
3. The site is entered in the publisher’s register of interests at Lancashire County Council.
4. Until an external reviewer is appointed, no finding that names an organisation is promoted at all.
5. The site does not publish savings estimates, efficiency scores, political commentary or campaign material. Material of that kind produced by the publisher lives elsewhere and is not linked from here.

Neutrality and the public interest test

The site takes no position on any party, council or councillor. It treats every council in England identically, whoever runs it, and it publishes no commentary, no campaign material and no view on whether any payment was right or wrong.

Anything beyond a public body’s own published figures is published only if it passes a public interest test: the information must concern the use of public money, be derived from documents the public body itself published, be produced by a rule that is stated on the page and applied to every body alike, and be something a reader could check for themselves from the sources linked. If a figure fails any part of that test it is not published, however interesting it is.

Funding

The site is funded by the publisher personally. It carries no advertising, takes no payment from any supplier, council or political organisation, and sells no data. If that ever changes, this page will say so first.

What we publish, and what we do not

We publish:

• Payments over each body’s publication threshold, as the body published them, with the body’s own supplier name, date, amount and description.
• Totals, monthly patterns and largest recipients derived from those payments, with the rule that produced each one stated beside it.
• Budget and outturn figures from the returns councils make to central government, with the return named.
• Whether each body has published what the Local Government Transparency Code requires, as at a stated date, with the page we checked.

We do not publish:

• The names of individuals. Councils are required to withhold the names of private individuals, foster carers, care recipients and staff. We mirror every such redaction and add our own filter for names that look like a person’s. Payments to individuals are counted in totals and never listed.
• Any figure we could not reconcile. A council year that does not reconcile against the council’s own outturn or budget shows no total. The page says what is held and why no figure is shown.
• Any claim that a payment is wrong, wasteful or improper. Where an automated check flags a pattern, the site states the rule that fired and the question it raises, not a conclusion.
• Rankings of councils by what they spend. Coverage differs between councils and such a ranking would be false. Councils are compared only within a type and only when every council in the comparison has a complete, reconciled year.

The source always wins

If a figure on this site and the council’s own published file disagree, the council’s file is right and ours is wrong. Tell us, and we will correct it and record the correction.

Corrections, right of reply and complaints

The corrections log is public and permanent. Anyone named on the site, or any public body covered by it, can ask for a correction or reply under the right of reply policy. Complaints about how we handle personal data follow the complaints procedure. All three are linked from the foot of every page.

Contact

info@aidoge.co.uk

Corrections log

Every change made to a published figure, statement or page because it was wrong or misleading is recorded here, permanently, with the date, what changed, why, and who asked. Corrections are listed newest first. Nothing is removed from this log.

If you believe something on this site is wrong, write to info@aidoge.co.uk with the page address and the council’s own document that shows the correct figure. We aim to reply within two working days and to correct or explain within ten.

Log

2026-09-03: budget comparison figure removed

• Where: the Budgets page of every council site.
• What changed: a tile comparing total recorded payments across several years with a single year’s net revenue budget, and describing the result as a percentage over budget, was removed.
• Why: the two figures measure different things over different periods and the comparison was misleading.
• Raised by: internal review.

2026-09-03: savings figures removed from council pages

• Where: the home page of every council site.
• What changed: tiles showing a national savings estimate and a savings delivered figure were removed.
• Why: the figures were modelled estimates presented without their assumptions, on pages otherwise showing only published data.
• Raised by: internal review.

2026-09-03: statement about political affiliation corrected

• Where: the Legal page and the About page.
• What changed: a statement that the site has no political party affiliation was replaced by a declaration that the publisher is a Reform UK county councillor and a description of how that conflict is managed.
• Why: the original statement was untrue as written.
• Raised by: internal review.

Right of reply and takedown

Who this applies to

Any organisation named on the site as a recipient of public money, any public body the site covers, and any individual who believes they are identifiable from something the site publishes.

Right of reply

Before the site promotes any finding that names an organisation, meaning any placement beyond the organisation appearing in a payment row or a list of largest recipients, we write to the organisation with the finding, the rule that produced it, and the source documents. The organisation has five working days to reply. Any reply is published with the finding, unedited, up to 300 words. If the reply shows the finding to be wrong, the finding is not published and the correction is logged.

Findings that appear only as a council’s own published row do not go through this process, because the site is republishing what the council published. The row links to the council’s file so the reader can check.

Asking for a correction

Write to info@aidoge.co.uk with the page address and the document that shows the correct position. The council’s own published file is decisive. We acknowledge within two working days and correct, explain or decline with reasons within ten. Every correction is recorded in the public corrections log.

Asking for removal

We remove material where the law requires it, and we do not remove material because a body would prefer its published spending not to be visible.

We will remove or suppress, on request and without delay:

• The name of a private individual, foster carer, care recipient, benefit recipient or member of staff that a council published in error. Send the page address. We suppress the name within two working days, keep the payment in the totals, notify the council of its error, and record the event in the corrections log without the name.
• Anything that identifies a child or a vulnerable adult, immediately on notice.
• Anything a court has ordered removed.

We will consider, case by case:

• A sole trader who asks that their trading name be removed. Councils are required to publish payments to sole traders and the Local Government Transparency Code says sole traders should expect this. We will usually decline, and will always explain why, and the requester can complain under the complaints procedure.

We will not:

• Remove a payment row that matches the council’s published file.
• Alter a figure at the request of the body that published it, other than by replacing it with the body’s own corrected file, which is recorded as a correction.

Records

We keep a record of every request, the decision and the reason, and publish a count of requests and outcomes each year.

Complaints procedure

This is the complaints procedure for how the site handles personal data, as the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 requires of every data controller. It also covers any other complaint about the site.

How to complain

Write to info@aidoge.co.uk with “Complaint” in the subject line, the page address, and what you want to happen.

What happens next

1. We acknowledge your complaint within thirty days, and in practice within two working days.
2. We investigate. If your complaint concerns a figure, we check it against the public body’s published file. If it concerns personal data, we check what we hold, where it came from and the basis on which we published it.
3. We reply with a decision and reasons. Where we uphold the complaint we say what we have changed and record it in the corrections log. Where we do not, we say why.

If you are not satisfied

You can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113. You do not have to complain to us first, but it is usually faster.

Records

We keep a record of every complaint and its outcome for two years and publish the number received and upheld each year.

Data protection statement

Who is the controller

The publisher named on the editorial policy page is the data controller for any personal data on this site. Contact: info@aidoge.co.uk.

What personal data the site contains

The site republishes payment records that councils and other public bodies publish under the Local Government Transparency Code 2015 and equivalent rules. Most recipients are companies and public bodies, which are not personal data. Some recipients are sole traders or partnerships trading under a personal name, which is personal data.

Councils are required to withhold the names of private individuals, foster carers, care recipients, benefit recipients and staff. We mirror every such redaction, and we run our own filter for names that look like a person’s before publication. Names that fail the filter are held back until checked. Payments to individuals are counted in totals and never listed.

The site itself sets no accounts and collects no personal data from visitors beyond what the privacy policy describes.

The basis on which we publish

We publish sole-trader names on two bases.

First, legitimate interests. There is a public interest in knowing who receives public money, Parliament has required councils to publish it, the Transparency Code says sole traders should expect their payments to be visible, and the information was already public before we republished it. We have recorded a legitimate interests assessment and will provide it on request.

Second, the journalism exemption in the Data Protection Act 2018. The site is published with a view to publication of material in the public interest, and we have regard to the Information Commissioner’s code of practice on journalism.

What we do not do

We do not build profiles of individuals. Entities our matching identifies as individuals get no supplier page and are excluded from cross-council totals. We do not sell, licence or share personal data with anyone.

Where the data comes from and how long we keep it

Each payment row links to the public body’s file it came from. We keep a copy of every source file, with its checksum and the date we fetched it, so that a figure can be checked and so that a body’s later change to a file is recorded rather than silently applied. Source files are kept indefinitely as a record of what was published. If a body withdraws a file, we mark the rows as superseded and say so on the page.

Your rights

You can ask what personal data we hold about you, ask for it to be corrected, and object to our publishing it. Write to info@aidoge.co.uk. The right of reply and takedown page says how requests about a published name are handled. The complaints procedure says how to complain, and how to complain to the Information Commissioner.

Licensing and reuse

The data the site uses

Payment data comes from files published by each council or public body. The Local Government Transparency Code recommends publication under the Open Government Licence. Where a body states that licence, the site records it and reuses the data under it with attribution to the body. Where a body states no licence, the site records that too and reuses the data on the basis that the Code requires its publication for reuse. Each body’s page shows which applies.

Budget and outturn data comes from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Company matching uses Companies House data under the same licence. Boundaries and geography come from the Office for National Statistics under the same licence.

The Open Government Licence does not cover personal data. Personal data on this site is handled as the data protection statement describes.

Reusing what this site publishes

Everything the site derives from those sources, including totals, supplier pages, downloads and the API, is released under the Open Government Licence v3.0. You may copy, publish, adapt and build on it, for any purpose, provided you attribute it as “AI DOGE, aidoge.co.uk, from data published by [body]” and do not suggest that the site or any public body endorses your use.

Downloads carry a checksum so that a copy can be verified against what the site published.