Council transparency

We believe that it is important that you can see how your Council Tax is spent. These pages provide you with the opportunity to view a wide range of information about our spending.

Apprenticeship targets

The Public Sector Apprenticeship Targets Regulations 2017 came into force on 31 March 2018. As a public sector employer with 250 or more staff, we have been set a target of employing at least 2.3% of our workforce as new apprentices over the period of 1 April 2017 to 31 March 2021. We are also required to publish our progress towards this target on an annual basis.

View our Apprenticeship Reports.

Complaints

View our customer service standards, compliments and complaints page.

Council contracts and tenders

View our tenders and contracts page and details of our current contracts.

Council decisions

We have a Leader and Cabinet executive structure, in which the overall budget and policy framework is determined by Full Council (all 54 councillors) with the Leader and Cabinet responsible for most day-to-day decisions.

Each member of the Cabinet is supported by an advisory committee.

We also have a Scrutiny Committee and Audit Committee that act as a check and balance on the Cabinet. Visit our councillors and decision making section on this website.

Councillors' allowances

We publish details of our councillors' allowance claims.  Details of the current Councillors' allowance scheme can be found in our Constitution in Appendix G - Members' Allowance Scheme.

Council performance

We manage our performance by:

  • Collecting the right information to measure the achievement of objectives and priorities
  • Analysing that information and putting it into context
  • Reporting in a clear and timely way to Members and officers to help them make decisions that will improve performance.

View the Council's performance against key local performance indicators.

Where we identify areas for improvement, they are set out in a Data Quality Action Plan, which is monitored by senior management.

Council spending

Council budgets and spending page for the annual accounts and Council budget information.

Council structure

View the Council's structure

Community grants

We publish details of the voluntary and community groups that receive community grants.

Data quality

We have put in place the commitments made in our Data Quality Statement to ensure that our information can be trusted. 

External audits and assessments

View information from the Audit Commission on the Council's annual audits.

View our Comprehensive Performance Assessment scorecards.

Fraud 

View our counter fraud work.

Food safety inspections

View the details of our food safety inspections on the Food Standards Agency website.

Freedom of information

A request for information must be made in writing to us. View our Freedom of Information page for details on how to make an FOI request and our Publication Scheme.

Gender pay gap reporting

View the comparison between men and women’s pay at the Council.

Greenhouse gas emissions report

Our Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions Report sets out the carbon emissions generated from running our offices, from the fleet of vehicles we use to deliver services and the business mileage travelled by Officers and Members.

Land and property assets

As part of our commitment to the Government's Local Transparency Code 2014, a list of land and property assets has been published.  The list is categorised by Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN), address, map reference and tenure details. 

The Council owns a number of small areas of amenity land, grass verges and private footpaths throughout the District. If you have any queries in relation to these or any asset listed, please email property@sevenoaks.gov.uk. We may need to treat your enquiry as a request under the Freedom of Information Act.

Parking account 

Councils that carry out parking enforcement are required to produce an annual report about their parking enforcement activities to provide relevant statistical and financial data.

The reports are intended to improve understanding and acceptance of civil parking enforcement through greater transparency.

Pay policy and pay multiple

Our Pay Policy Statement is prepared to meet the requirements of the Localism Act 2011.

It sets out our policies towards a range of issues relating to the pay of our workforce. The policy includes details of our "pay multiple": our policy on the relationship between remuneration of chief officers and the remuneration of other staff

Petitions

We welcome petitions and recognise that signing a petition is one way you can let us know of your concerns.

See our petitions page for more details and a list of petitions received.

Planning applications

View current planning applications, decisions and appeals on our PublicAccess website or general information about the planning process.

Senior officer pay

You can view details of senior officer pay where the salaries are over £50,000.

Information we do not publish

We do not provide any Trade Union facility time and have no details to publish. 

We do not have a Government Procurement Card and there are no transactions to publish.

We operate our waste services in house and do not hold a waste contract with an external provider.