No verifiable spending and procurement rails for local government

Roughly 35 councils needed Exceptional Financial Support for 2026-27, negotiated bilaterally and opaquely, while years of accounts carry disclaimed audit opinions, meaning £100bn+ of annual local spending has neither timely audit assurance nor public verifiability. Spending-over-£500 CSV publications are stale, unstandardised and unauditable. Continuously auditable treasury rails (payments and procurement published as they happen in tamper-evident, machine-readable form) are technically routine; no UK council or public body runs them, and no funder has paid for a pilot.

The audit system failed and its replacement fixes plumbing, not assurance. Residents of effectively bankrupt councils cannot see where the money went; verifiable-by-default finance would make the next Thurrock visible years earlier, and is the strongest possible differentiator for any parallel institution handling community money.

A pilot with one willing council or combined authority (or a Pride in Place neighbourhood board): all payments and procurement published to a tamper-evident public ledger with supplier and category data, paired with an independent evaluation of cost, fraud-detection and trust effects.

// Build together: Counterparty: one willing council, combined authority or Pride in Place board publishing payments to the tamper-evident ledger pilot.

Over £100bn of annual spending lacks timely assurance while tamper-evident treasury rails are technically routine yet unfunded, with no council or funder having piloted them.