LG Inform Benchmarking: Compare Your Council with Similar Areas

Your council can spend more and still deliver less. Without a fair comparison, though, that fact is hard to prove.

That is where LG Inform benchmarking helps. It lets you check spending, outcomes and local pressures against councils with similar duties and similar communities, so your questions carry more weight.

If you care about roads, GP access, town centres, public safety or value for money, this is one of the clearest places to start.

What LG Inform can show you, and why it matters

LG Inform is the Local Government Association’s online data tool for councils and the public. As of April 2026, it remains active and wide-ranging, with more than 6,600 data items available to registered users and roughly 4,000 visible to the public.

That matters because raw spending figures rarely tell the full story. A council may spend more because it has older residents, higher need, a larger road network or extra housing pressure. Good benchmarking puts those facts beside the numbers.

You can search themes such as finance, housing, waste, social care, public health and complaints. There are also ready-made reports, and recent updates include a Q1 2025/26 benchmarking summary report, plus newer reporting linked to the Local Outcomes Framework.

This is the basic lens to use when you compare councils:

What to compare	Example measure	Why it matters
Costs	Spend per resident, per household, or per service user	Shows relative spend
Results	Recycling rate, complaints, delayed care, housing delivery	Shows what that spend achieves
Demand	Deprivation, age profile, rural spread, claim rates	Adds local context

The main point is simple. Don’t look at cost on its own. Put cost, result and demand side by side.

For residents in Durham, or any similar area, that approach helps cut through spin. If local people are worried about underinvestment, stretched services or weak value for money, benchmarking gives those concerns evidence.

How to compare council costs fairly in LG Inform

The first rule of LG Inform benchmarking is to compare like with like. If you choose the wrong peers, the numbers can mislead you.

Start with the council type. A unitary authority should usually be compared with other unitaries. A district should be compared with districts. Duties differ, so the budget mix differs as well.

Then follow a short process:

1. Open the benchmarking clubs page or the main search tools and pick a service area, such as waste, adult social care or housing.
2. Add your council, then build a peer group with similar size, deprivation, urban or rural mix, and service responsibilities.
3. Pull both a cost metric and an outcome metric for the same service.
4. Check several years, not one snapshot, so you can see whether the gap is growing or narrowing.

A good example is waste collection. Don’t stop at spend per household. Put that beside recycling rates, fly-tipping levels and missed collections where available. The same logic works for children’s services, planning, homelessness or complaints handling.

Real councils already use the tool this way. In the Barnet case study, LG Inform helped support spending reviews by linking unit costs with service results. That is useful because a cheaper service is not always better, and a costly service is not always failing.

If you are checking County Durham against similar places, keep the comparison grounded. Match councils with similar demand and duties first. After that, look for outliers. If Durham sits well above the peer average on cost but below it on outcomes, that deserves a closer look.

How to read the numbers without jumping to the wrong conclusion

Data can sharpen scrutiny, but only if you read it with care. One expensive line in a budget is not proof of waste.

The best benchmark compares like with like, then asks whether higher spending leads to better results.

Look for patterns instead of headlines. A council may have high costs and strong results, which could point to heavy demand. It may have average costs and poor results, which often suggests weak delivery. The most worrying pattern is high cost with weak outcomes over time.

Recent LG Inform updates make this easier. The 2025/26 reports include measures on waste, fly-tipping, website visitors and formal complaints. Those are useful because they connect money, demand and day-to-day service experience.

You should also keep one eye on trend data. A single bad year might follow an unusual event. Three weak years in a row tell a different story.

That matters for local campaigning. People often talk about road repairs, strained GP access, town-centre decline, energy costs and community safety. Benchmarking will not answer every question, but it can show whether spending lines up with local priorities and whether performance is moving in the right direction.

Once you have the evidence, use it well. Raise it with councillors, bring it to public meetings, share it with local groups and ask for plain answers. If costs are high, ask why. If results are weak, ask for the recovery plan. If spending is lower than peers but outcomes are also poor, ask what residents are losing.

This is where accountability stops being a slogan. It becomes measurable.

Conclusion

LG Inform works best when you use it with discipline. Pick the right peers, compare costs and results together, and check trends across several years.

That approach gives residents a firmer grip on council performance. It also supports the kind of transparent, practical politics many people in Durham want to see.

If you want that kind of local scrutiny and honest action, Join Reform UK, Vote Reform UK, and back a movement that puts communities first. For supporters who believe public money should be tracked properly and promises should mean something, that is one way to Make Britain Great Again.