Describe your idea:

A clear way to understand public budgets in human terms. You can only have FOI if its understandable. Most budgetary information is hard to read and does not give the cost of individual services. Reports use gross figures (and are often wrong!). So a way to compare the typical cost of going to visit a local GP (£15?) or A&E (£1000?). Or if my council spends lots more on bin collection than another. How much goes on admin? If more people knew it typically costs £8,000 a week to keep a youth in prison, they might decide to invest in cheaper preventative youth work. Exactly how much does my local traffic warden cost? Is privatising a service really going to be cheaper? Where’s my tax going? Is it being well spent? I want to know!

What problem does it solve?:

We’re making decisions based on mis-reading the true cost of providing a service. Public consultation is useless if only trained accountants can understand the figures. Citizens, councilors and MPs are often left in the dark. Having a simple way of breaking down the gross figure into the ‘unit’ costs or ‘per resident’ is easy to understand, and easier to compare. It would bring more transparency to what is actually happening in public finance. So helps to reduce waste, empower citizens, expose corruption, and spot good practice! I think we’d spend more on preventing problems before they happen. Citizens could hold politicians and public officials ‘to account’ better if they had relevant useful comparative information.

Type of idea: A brand new project