About

Where Councils Stand makes the record of councils across the UK easy to search, with every point sourced to the council's own minutes.

Councils decide a great deal about everyday life: bins, roads, housing, libraries, planning policy, council tax. Their decisions are recorded in minutes that councils publish, but few people have time to read them. Where Councils Stand reads them, so that journalists and anyone else can ask what councils have decided, and see how councillors voted, with each councillor's party on the date. It covers England's strategic authorities too, the combined authorities and their mayors that now decide much of an area's transport, skills and investment, so that their decisions can be read beside their councils'.

Fair to every party

The same rules apply to every party and every council. Evidence is drawn in turn from councils under each party's control, and under no overall control, and from England's strategic authorities by their mayor's party, which is never counted as control of a council. Briefings report what the minutes record, in neutral words, and loaded words in the AI model's own voice are flagged. Party colours are used only to tell parties apart in a chart, never to mark a passage or a briefing. Votes are shown with neutral marks, never green for yes and red for no.

In the family

Where Councils Stand is a Where They Stand project. Its sister sites are Where MPs Stand, Where Landlords Stand, Where Countries Stand and Where Lives Stand; the charity's own site is wheretheystand.uk. Where They Stand is applying to register as a charity in England and Wales.

Where the records meet, the sites link to each other. The page of each council in England links to Where Landlords Stand, for the council as a landlord, where it owns homes, and for the social landlords with homes in its area. Under each briefing, a link asks Where MPs Stand the same question, on the record of the UK Parliament.

Independent

Where Councils Stand is independent. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by any council, the Local Government Association, Civica or Northgate. Civica make Modern.gov and CMIS, and Northgate make CoINS, the systems councils publish their minutes through. Councils' minutes remain the councils' copyright. They are shown only as short, cited extracts that link to the council's own record.

Getting in touch

To report something wrong, or ask for something to be removed, use the corrections page. For anything else, email admin@wherecouncilsstand.com. The code is on GitHub.