Open Source

Licensing

CivAccount uses a dual licence: open MIT code, plus a data licence for the compiled dataset

The short version

Look up anything, quote any figure, embed any widget, cite us anywhere — all free. Just don't copy the whole dataset or use it to build a competing council-data product.

Application Code — MIT License

Free to use, modify, and distribute

All application code (components, utilities, configuration, and styling) is released under the MIT License. You are free to:

Use the code for any purpose, including commercial projects
Modify the code to suit your needs
Distribute copies of the original or modified code

The only requirement is that you include the original copyright notice and license text in any copy of the software.

Compiled Dataset — CivAccount Data Licence v1.1

Quote and embed freely; no bulk copying

The compiled council dataset (budget breakdowns, service spending, financial figures, and all enriched metadata across 317 councils) is under the CivAccount Data Licence. This covers the compilation and enrichment work, not the underlying government data.

You can, without asking:

Quote any figure in your article, paper, or post — e.g. “Kent's Band D county precept is £1,691.19 in 2025-26 (source: CivAccount)”
Embed a council's spending breakdown on your site, commercial or not
Fork the code on GitHub to build your own thing — the public repository holds MIT code and sample fixtures, not the dataset, so cloning it never violates this licence
Use the data structure as inspiration, compiling your own data independently

You can't, without written permission:

Scrape every council page and package the result as your own dataset
Bulk copy or republish the dataset, or offer it as a feed, API, or download
Use it to build a competing council-data product or commercial service

Why the restriction? The raw data is free at GOV.UK for everyone, forever — if you need bulk data, that's the right place. What this licence protects is the months of work turning it into one verified, comparable dataset.

Government Source Data

Open Government Licence v3.0

The raw government data used to build the CivAccount dataset is Crown Copyright, published under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Anyone can freely obtain and use this raw data directly from GOV.UK.

Data sources

Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG); Office for National Statistics (ONS); Department for Transport (DfT); Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA); Ofsted; individual council publications.

Contributing

Help make CivAccount better

We welcome contributions from the community. Whether it's fixing bugs, adding features, improving documentation, or suggesting ideas, your help makes CivAccount better for everyone.

Visit our GitHub repository to get started:

View on GitHub

Full MIT License text

MIT License

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.