Data story · Spending and payments
Where does Cheshire East Council’s money go?
The council publishes its payments over £500 as one dataset per financial year on its ArcGIS Hub. We joined all 8 years into one table. In the 7 complete financial years from 2019/20 to 2025/26 it paid £2777.9m to 5,087 suppliers, and ten of them received 33% of it.
- £2777.9m
- paid in payments over £500, 2019/20 to 2025/26
- 5,087
- suppliers paid in those 7 years
- 33%
- of the money went to the ten biggest suppliers
- £431.9m
- in 2019/20, the biggest year, against £342.5m in 2021/22
Councils in England publish what they spend under the Local Government Transparency Code. Cheshire East does it on its ArcGIS Hub, as a separate dataset for each financial year, and the datasets have changed shape over the years: dates in four different formats, and category labels and codes that swap columns. One table makes the questions easy: how much a year, to whom, and for what.
Spending by financial year
Financial years run April to March. * Part years: 2026/27 (6 months). In 2019/20 the largest areas were People (£194.9m), Central Balances (£117.8m) and Places (£74.0m).
Every month, April 2019 to September 2026
One bar per month of payment dates. The biggest month is March 2026, at £63,469,209.
The ten biggest suppliers
2019/20 to 2025/26, with the area most of their payments were booked to.
- RINGWAY JACOBS *USE ACC 225768*£291.8m
Place · 171 payment lines
- ANSA ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES LIMITED£239.4m
Place · 2,276 payment lines
- JOHN GRAHAM CONSTRUCTION LIMITED£80.9m
Central Balances · 81 payment lines
- CHESHIRE WEST AND CHESTER COUNCIL£61.2m
Place · 1,954 payment lines
- BALFOUR BEATTY REGIONAL CONSTRUCTION LIMITED£53.2m
Place · 246 payment lines
- TRANSPORT SERVICE SOLUTIONS LIMITED£46.9m
Places · 157 payment lines
- EQUANS SERVICES LIMITED£41.7m
Place · 7,560 payment lines
- WEST MERCIA ENERGY£40.4m
Corporate · 347 payment lines
- BLOOM PROCUREMENT SERVICES LTD£35.1m
Place · 2,563 payment lines
- WIRRAL COMMUNITY NHS TRUST£29.9m
Adult Health and Integration · 196 payment lines
What it was for
By Proclass category, 2019/20 to 2025/26.
- Works - Construction, Repair & Maintenance£429.1m (15%)
- Unclassified Non trade£405.2m (15%)
- Social Community Care Supplies & Services£292.5m (11%)
- Education£276.2m (10%)
- Environmental Services£263.3m (9%)
- Social Community Care£219.1m (8%)
- Construction£135.1m (5%)
- Unclassified Non Trade£134.1m (5%)
- Passenger Transport£83.5m (3%)
- Information Communication Technology£63.6m (2%)
- Utilities£58.2m (2%)
- Consultancy£53.1m (2%)
Top ten expense areas
- Place£833.3m
- Children's Services£594.6m
- People£374.4m
- Adult Health and Integration£314.9m
- Central Balances£212.1m
- Places£139.8m
- Corporate£103.0m
- Performance and Capacity£82.2m
- Strategic Childrens Services (Interim)£48.7m
- Resources£41.4m
The five largest single payment lines
| Date | Supplier | Expense area | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8 May 2024 | Peveril Securities Ltd | Place | £10,347,046 |
| 10 March 2026 | TLT Solicitors LLP | Place | £7,322,501 |
| 24 April 2026 | Ringway Jacobs *use Acc 225768* | Place | £7,307,315 |
| 24 June 2026 | Ringway Jacobs *use Acc 225768* | Place | £6,154,528 |
| 10 March 2026 | TLT Solicitors LLP | Place | £5,943,164 |
Read with care
- Every line is for £500 or more and none is negative: the council publishes payments only, with no credit notes netted off.
- Suppliers are compared by name. 22 appear under more than one spelling (for example ADOPTION MATTERS and ADOPTION MATTERS (FOSTER CARE MATTERS)), and each spelling counts separately.
- Months are payment dates. In the 2025/26 dataset some dates had day and month swapped (a payment reported in January 2026 dated 1 December 2026); we swapped them back using each line’s reporting date.
How we worked this out
- Source: the 8 yearly Expenditure exceeding 500 GBP datasets on the council’s Hub, 317,235 lines in all, joined into one table. Dates came as real dates, UK and US text dates, “12-Jan-21” and Excel day numbers; they were all read into one format.
- Financial years run April to March; only complete years are compared.
- The figures are computed from the published data when this site is built, not typed in by hand.