Every headline figure on our home page, explained: what it counts, which documents it is drawn from, and the councils or national bodies behind it. The figures below are read from our data as the page loads, so they always match the rest of the site.
For what each label means — Acting, Acknowledging, Blocking, Silent, and every decision status — see what the words mean.
Local councils
406 councils tracked
A council joins this count as soon as we have scored it against at least one tracked . Councils we have not yet gathered documents for are not counted, so this is the size of our coverage — not the number of councils in the UK.
The table shows how many documents of each kind we hold for each council, which is what decides the figures we can work out for it. Meeting give us the record of what was decided; press releases let us compare what a council says against what it decided; public-meeting papers show what residents asked for.
Of the 406 councils we track, this is the share whose is — a council that has formally passed at least 35% of the actions we check it against. Where fewer than 13 actions apply to a council, we raise that bar to 45%, because a handful of decisions says less than a long record. A council that has voted against enough actions counts as instead, even if it clears that bar.
This figure uses meeting minutes only — the record we trust most, because a minute is proof of what a council actually decided. 63 councils have fewer than 5 scored actions, which is too little to judge, so they are given no profile at all.
0% greenwash risk(0 of 406 councils)Probably an undercount
Of the 406 councils we track, this is the share we have marked — where what a council claims in public runs ahead of what it has formally decided. We mark a council that way when that gap shows up in at least 2 policy , or in 1 theme where its claims across all themes outnumber its decisions by more than 2. We can only make the comparison for a council we hold at least 2 press or public-information documents for.
What is missing: we hold no press or public-information documents for 347 of 406 councils, so there is nothing to compare their decisions against. They still count towards the total but can never count towards the share above, which makes the figure a floor: the real share is probably higher.
0% democracy deficit(0 of 406 councils)Probably an undercount
Of the 406 councils we track, this is the share we have marked a — the public asked for at least 3 of the actions we track and the council has passed fewer than 3 of them. We can only judge a council whose public-meeting records or residents' submissions we hold.
What is missing:we hold no public-meeting records or residents' submissions for 376 of 406 councils. With nothing to show what residents asked for, those councils are marked — quiet on both sides — rather than a deficit, so the real count is probably higher than the figure above.
Each national body is counted once: the parliament , the UK government departments and the devolved governments. A body joins this count as soon as we have checked it against at least one tracked action — whether or not we found anything.
Software reads these documents, so some of what you see is wrong. Show us the document and we correct the record. The score is then worked out again from the corrected facts. The verdict itself is never negotiated.
Every figure here is worked out from our data as the page loads. The date we last gathered documents is shown in the freshness banner on the home page.
Of the 15 national bodies we track, this is the share where we found something on the record for at least one action — that is, at least 1 action whose is anything other than .
Every body below has at least one action we found a record for. That record may be a formal decision () or support in words only ().
Body
Kind
Acting
Acknowledging
UK Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs (Defra)
Of the 15 national bodies we track, this is the share we found something on the record for — at least 1 action whose verdict is not — but never a formal decision to act: no verdict on any action at all. Words on the record, with no binding decision behind them.
Institution
Tier
Acknowledging actions
Acting actions
UK Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs (Defra)
Of the 15 national bodies we track, this is the share that stayed on at least 1 action the public had already pushed for — where people had signed an or a on that action and the body still said nothing.
