The questions a local authority needs answered
Every council owns buildings and delivers capital projects — but the answers to the most basic questions are scattered across spreadsheets, contractors' systems and officers' inboxes. This framework sets out the questions, the data that answers each one, and where that answer lives in this demo.
8 themes · every question mapped to data fields in the Cheltenham dataset
Why this framework exists
Local authorities face major budget pressure while running ageing estates and complex capital programmes with fragmented data. Officers assemble answers by hand; members make multi-year decisions from single-year snapshots. When the delivery record lives in one place, these questions stop being research projects and become dashboard reads — and the ones no council can answer alone (am I paying too much?) get answered by the anonymised peer pool.
01
Financial control
Budget pressure means every pound of capital has to be defensible. The first question a s151 officer asks of any programme is whether spend and delivery are moving together.
What is our total capital programme, and how much is committed?
Which projects are spending ahead of delivery — burning budget faster than they build?
Where will the programme be over budget at year end, and by how much?
What is our exposure if a troubled project keeps slipping?
02
Building safety & the golden thread
The Building Safety Act makes the golden thread a legal duty, not good practice. For higher-risk buildings, incomplete evidence is now a gateway blocker with statutory consequences.
Which of our buildings are higher-risk buildings, and is each safety case current?
How complete is the golden thread on every live project — and which submission is at risk?
Are our statutory compliance checks — fire, asbestos, legionella, electrical — up to date on every asset?
03
Asset condition & maintenance backlog
Most councils cannot state their maintenance backlog to the nearest £10m because condition data lives in one-off surveys. The backlog is a liability that compounds silently.
What buildings do we actually own, and what condition is each one in?
What is our total maintenance backlog, and which assets carry the most of it?
Which assets are deteriorating fastest — where does £1 of maintenance now save £5 later?
Answered byassets[].condition_gradeassets[].backlog_gbpassets[].next_surveySee it: Portfolio → Assets
Which assets sit in flood zones or carry climate risk?
04
Delivery risk
Slippage is rarely announced — it accumulates. The signal is in the pattern: spend versus progress, risk counts, repeated programme revisions.
Which projects are off track right now, and which are trending that way?
Where are the high risks concentrated — by project, by programme, by contractor?
What needs a decision this week — before it becomes an overspend?
05
Supplier health & concentration
A contractor failure mid-programme is one of the most expensive events a council can suffer. The warning signs — late accounts, charges, slippage across every commission — are visible if anyone joins them up.
How is each contractor performing across everything we have with them?
How much of the programme is concentrated in one supplier — and what if they fail?
Are there external distress signals on any contractor — late filings, charges, credit events?
06
Value for money & benchmarking
"Are we paying too much?" is the question no council can answer alone — it needs a peer pool. Anonymised cross-authority benchmarks turn a guess into a position on a distribution.
Is our cost per home / per m² / per space above or below what peers pay?
How reliably do we deliver against peers — overruns, certainty, on-time completion?
What would reaching the peer median release across the programme?
07
Social value & local economy
Social value commitments are made at procurement and forgotten by month six. The recovery window closes early — an under-delivering scheme at 20% complete can still be fixed; at 80% it cannot.
Is every project on track against its local-spend and apprenticeship commitments?
Answered byprojects[].social_value.local_spend_pctprojects[].social_value.target_pctSee it: Portfolio → Social value
How many local jobs and apprenticeships has the programme actually created?
Answered byprojects[].social_value.jobsprojects[].social_value.apprenticeshipsSee it: Portfolio → Social value
08
Energy, EPC & net zero
Net-zero commitments are made estate-wide but delivered building by building. Without a live EPC picture, retrofit money goes where the paperwork is, not where the carbon is.
What is the EPC position across our estate, and where are the records missing?
Is the retrofit programme verifiably improving energy performance?
Which buildings should the next wave of decarbonisation money go to?
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Scenario budgeting — the question behind every other question
Members approve budgets one year at a time, but every decision made today has a multi-year cost. "What does deferring this £1m of maintenance cost us over five years?" is the question this data exists to answer — the multi-year forecast lines in the dataset (budget_forecast[]) power the Scenario Budgeting view.