All expenditure over £500

Spending over £500 is published as part of a drive to improve openness and transparency.

During the financial quarter July to September 2010 £ 95 million was paid to vendors on a huge variety of items including care homes, agency staff and utility bills.

For reasons of privacy payments to individuals including foster carers, children’s and adult carers are not included in the list. Payments made via CHAPS e.g. repayment of loans, funding to schools, housing benefit payments and payments taken directly from our bank account (excluding agency costs) are not included either.

The spreadsheet listed below is shown in a fairly raw format. Although it may seem easy to produce, this document was pulled together using information from over 1,000 different cost centres, 11 service areas and 1,000 capital projects and a number of different systems. We will aim to present this information in a more useful way as we go forward.

If you have suggestions as to how the council can best present this information please email us at: expenditure@barnet.gov.uk The council will continue to publish data quarterly in arrears.

Adult social services

Payments made by Adult Social Services principally comprise of those made to private and voluntary sector organisations who provide and support the provision of a range of social care services to residents on behalf of the council. This amounts to 76% of total spend directly to individuals with social care needs to enable them to control and manage the care provided for them. Payments are also made to council staff responsible, directly or indirectly for the delivery of social care. The spreadsheet contains details of spend made to private and voluntary sector organisations only, with payments made to individuals excluded.

Children's services

Barnet Children’s Service provides a wide range of services to children and young people including social care, support for schools, youth services and support for families etc. A number of services are commissioned from a range of providers including voluntary sector. It includes payments to private, voluntary and independent nurseries, fostering agencies and providers for children with special educational needs. It also includes capital spending which is made up of payments to building contractors, architects and other building professionals. We have excluded certain payments such as support to individual foster carers and funding payments to maintained schools from this spreadsheet.

Environment & Operations

Environment & Operations provide services relating to refuse collection, street cleansing, highways maintenance, transport and parks & open spaces. Service delivery is a mixture of those delivered in-house and contracted out. The larger payments listed under ‘expenditure by supplier’ tend to be for recycling, vehicle lease & hire, highways maintenance & highways capital spend.

Planning, Housing, Regeneration & Environmental Health

Payments by Planning, Housing, Regenation & Environmental Health mainly cover management fees to Barnet Homes and landlord fees to temporary accommodation providers. Our Landlord service is managed by the ALMO Barnet Homes, in addition we support people with housing need through the provision of temporary accommodation and adaptation grants. We also undertake a lot of work towards regenerating the estates and town centres of Barnet, through our regeneration projects and local development policies.