Commission to release data sets on charities' spending

The Charity Commission data sets on how charities spend their money will be made publicly available in an open data format by March 2014.

Data on how charities with an income over £500,000 allocated their revenues across fundraising, governance and charitable activities and what they retain for future use is held by the Commission as well as headline income and expenditure figures for all registered charities.

The Cabinet Office has stated that making the data available will enable technology developers to create applications that will let citizens utilise and understand the data.

The data release is part of the government’s wider open data policy. Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs is also considering how to release part of the VAT register and the Land Registry has confirmed that it is to publish historical Price Paid Data in CSV format as linked data from July.