Open data

As part of our commitment to accountability and transparency we have put together a range of information about how the council operates, our staff and what we spend.

Unless otherwise stated all the data are made available under the Open Government Licence which means you can reuse them if you wish. Where possible the data are also available to download. More information about the file formats used, and the computer programs needed to view them, are available at the bottom of the page.

We are also very keen to hear about any datasets that you would find particularly useful, as this will allow us to prioritise what we release.  Please leave a comment on our “Opening up our data” page.

Some data that we are in the process of publishing is also on the Opening up our data page – we are still working on the best formats and processes to use but are making them available in the meantime as beta versions.  We can’t promise that they won’t change in the future but if you let us know you are using them, we’ll keep you informed of our plans.


Spending over £500
Details of all transactions that the council makes over £500. The data are available as CSV files for each month.

Senior employee salaries
Information about salaries for senior staff. ‘Senior’ refers to those earning £58,200 or more – this is the Senior Civil Service minimum pay band. Information is also included for posts that report directly to the Chief Executive, a Strategic Director or a Head of Service. Information showing the organisational structure and job descriptions are also available.

You may also find our webpages about our Leadership Team and Heads of Service useful.

Pay multiple
The pay multiple is the ratio between the highest paid salary and median average salary of the whole of the council’s workforce.

Councillor allowances and expenses
All county councillors are each paid a Basic Allowance. Some are also paid a Special Responsibility Allowance to reflect additional duties they perform. They may also claim mileage and subsistence expenses while carrying out their duties.  Details of the allowances paid are available as CSV files.

Trade union facility time
Information about the number of trade unions represented in the council, the number of representatives and estimates of the costs.

Contracts and tenders
Information about contracts and tenders that the council has can be found on the Supplying The South West website. Data can be downloaded from there to a spreadsheet.

Grants to the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector
Information on the level of support provided by the council to voluntary and community groups. The data show all payments made by the council under the ‘Grants’ section of our finance system.

Location of public land and buildings
Addresses and grid references for property owned or used by the County Council. Information is also included about the tenure and size of the property, and what it’s used for. The data are available as a CSV file or as a KML file.

The democratic running of the council
You can find lots of information about the running of the council in the Democracy section of our website. The latest election results are available there, or as a PDF file.

Financial information
Performance, external audits and key information about the council’s fiscal and financial position.

Devon Highways
Assorted open data relating to Devon’s highways.  Date such as flooding enquiries and lists of streets can be found here. These data are released under a Creative Commons Non-commercial 4.0 licence. Some data may also be derived from Ordnance Survey which is Crown Copyright.

HR Dashboard

A new feature showing commonly-reported monthly statistics about the Devon County Council workforce in dashboard format.

Data formats

CSV Comma Separated Value A simple text file with each value separated by a comma.  Although you can use a text editor (such as Notepad) to view these files, they are best opened with a spreadsheet program such as Microsoft Excel or the free OpenOffice.org Calc. 
KML Keyhole Markup Language A text file that contains geograpic information.  These files can be viewed easily in Google Earth or Google Maps.  They can also be loaded in to a geographic information system (GIS) such as ArcGIS, MapInfo or the free Quantum GIS.
PDF Portable Document Format PDFs allow a user to see a document as it was intended by its creator.  They are useful as they remove the problems associated with opening documents in different programs. However they are difficult to alter and copying from them can lead to strange results. You can download a free viewer from Adobe to open these files.