CIPFA Statistical Information Service

Understanding and improving Value for Money

Posted on 5th January 2006; updated on 12th August 2010

The Use of Resources framework requires your council to demonstrate that it achieves good value for money by evidencing that costs compare well with others allowing for external factors, that costs are commensurate with service delivery, performance and outcomes achieved and that costs reflect council priorities.

Your authority may already have the foundations of good value for money but how can you articulate this? A comprehensive and detailed statistical analysis of your organisation against its comparators is essential and CIPFA are ideally placed to assist.

Each year CIPFA undertakes more than thirty statistical surveys of local authority operations, capturing information on a wide variety of local authority activities. CIPFAstats is the leading, independent source of comprehensive data about local government services and has been collecting and publishing information for over a century.

CIPFA has unrivalled access to local authority data and can draw on this expertise to help you evidence that your council is delivering good value for money. The attached leaflet tells you more about our VfM support for local authorities. If you’d like to talk about how CIPFA could help your authority, please give us a call or drop us an email at policy@cipfa.org.uk.

Related files:

Database File VfM Flyer
Database File VfM example report and appendices

CIPFAstats Datasets Browser