The detail of how tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money is being spent by some Whitehall departments is shrouded in mystery because the disclosure threshold is 50 times higher than in local government, town hall leaders can reveal.

Government departments are only required to publish details of individual items of spending above £25,000, leaving huge quantities of public money either unaccounted for, or masked by unclassified spending on departmental purchase cards. Eight departments have exceeded this requirement by publishing details of spending in excess of £500, while a ninth publishes details of £500 spending made on departmental purchase cards.

The LGA is calling on the remaining 12 Whitehall departments to take a lead from local government and those departments already committed to greater transparency by properly opening their books to armchair auditors. All but one of the 375 local authorities in England and Wales has published details of all individual items of spending in excess of £500.

Among those that have not revealed details of individual items of spending below £25,000 are the four biggest Government departments, with a combined spending power of more than £345 billion – more than twice the size of annual local government funding.

Baroness Margaret Eaton, LGA Chairman, said: ”It can’t be right that the spending disclosure limit for Government departments is higher than the average annual wage. A pound is worth the same whether it is spent by the town hall or Whitehall and the public has every right to know how civil servants are spending their taxes. Well done to those departments that are keeping pace with councils but too many are lagging behind. As Ministers have said in the past, sunshine is the best disinfectant. It’s time for all Government departments to lift their game to match local authority transparency. They should throw open their books to reveal details of all spending over £500.”

The call comes on the day the LG Group unveils LG Inform, a prototype of a new web-based tool which will allow council staff, and eventually members of the public, to analyse and compare their local services against those provided by other councils.

LG Inform, which is part of the LG Group’s Taking the Lead programme, will eventually become a comprehensive source of local government data. Fully interactive, LG Inform will allow town hall staff and residents to run customised comparisons of the key local services and outcomes that matter to them, such as the cost of fixing potholes or the percentage of children in their area achieving good grades at GCSE. The results will allow councils to learn from those which are doing better and help those not doing as well.

Lady Eaton continued: ”LG Inform will help local authorities increase transparency, improve services and bring down costs. Until now, comparing service outcomes and costs between different local authorities has been a difficult, time consuming and costly task. It has also been hard for residents to know if their council is leading the pack or lagging behind. In future, LG Inform will change that, making a huge quantity of customised information available at the click of a mouse.”

Today’s unveiling represents the first phase of the roll out of LG Inform, which involves councils signing up to the prototype service, starting to use it and starting to direct its on going development. Phase two, which is expected in the autumn, will involve integrating LG Inform to the LG Group’s Knowledge Hub platform, thereby giving councils direct access from the data to a range of guides, best practice and discussion groups to help further drive improvement.