How to publish senior officials' business expenses, hospitality and meetings

Prepare the data

The Cabinet Office Transparency Data team has provided this guidance on how to preparecollect and interpret your data.data for publication.

Senior Officials Transparency Guidance (PDF, 286201 KB, 1718 pages)

They will commission you with - CSV (comma-separated values) templates, timingtiming, and support on appropriate approval processes.

This guidance will apply to transparency data for the period of January - March 2024 onwards, to be published in due course.onwards

Government is committed to publishing this data quarterly.every quarter.

Publish the data

Create a new GOV.UK publication page for each data release.
Create a collection page on GOV.UK for all data releases, with links to each individual publication page.

Consider creating a www.data.gov.uk collection page for each individual data set

Publication page template

The publication title, summary, detail and file name is a government standard and must not be changed.

Publication type: Transparency data

Title: [Department name or acronym]: senior officials’ business expensesexpenses, hospitality, and hospitality,meetings [month to month] [year][year].
Example Title: “Cabinet Office: senior officials’ expenses, hospitality and meetings, July to September 2024”

Summary: Data on senior officials’ (SCS2+) business expensesexpenses, and hospitality, and [the permanent secretary’s/permanent secretaries’] meetings with external individuals and organisations.

Body:

[Department] publishes details of [the permanentPermanent secretary’s/permanentSecretaries, secretaries’]Director externalGenerals, meetingsFinance Directors, Commercial Directors and seniorDirectors officials’who businessare expensessenior andresponsible hospitalityowners onin athe quarterlyGovernment’s basis.

ThisMajor dataProjects isPortfolio] alsomeetings availablewith onexternal data.gov.uk:

• [addindividuals bulletedand linksorganisations, toand thesenior data.gov.ukofficials’ pagesbusiness thisexpenses dataand alsohospitality appearsevery on]

Associations

Policies: Government transparency and accountability

Policy areas: Government efficiency, transparency and accountability

CSV attachment titles:

titles

• [Department]’s permanentsenior secretaries’officials’ meetings,expenses, [month to month] [year]
• [Department]’s senior officials’ expenses,hospitality, [month to month] [year]
• [Department]’s senior officials’officials’s hospitality,meetings, [month to month] [year]

Add

For aexample:

1. Cabinet linkOffice onSenior data.gov.uk

Whenofficials’ theexpenses datasetJanuary isto published,March add2025

Collection page [GOV.UK]

Add the new publication page to your department’s collection page for this data.

Make sure the collection page is tagged to the Government transparency and accountability policy.

Collection page template

Title: [Department]: senior officials’ business expenses, hospitalityhospitality, and meetings

Summary: All data on senior officials’ (SCS2+) business expenses and hospitality, and [the[Permanent permanentSecretaries, secretary’s/permanentDirectors secretaries’]General, Finance Directors, Commercial Directors and Directors who are senior responsible owners in the Government’s Major Projects Portfolio] meetings with external organisations.

Body (optional):
[Department] publishes details of senior officials’ (SCS2+) business expenses and hospitality and the [the[Permanent permanentSecretaries, secretary’s/permanentDirectors secretaries’]General, Finance Directors, Commercial Directors and Directors who are senior responsible owners in the Government’s Major Projects Portfolio] meetings on a quarterly basis.

Subheadings: Add headings for each calendar year, most recent first.

DATA.GOV.UK page templates

IfWhen therethe aredataset nois reportspublished, add a link to it in your department’s section on data.gov.uk.

We recommend that this is maintained as a series of collection pages listing all historic links on GOV.UK with a direct link to the .CSV resource.
An individual page will need to be maintained for each of the following:

1. Expenses
2. Hospitality, and
3. Meetings

Title: [Department]: Senior Officials [the specific data set] data
Example - a quarter,page addfor ‘Nothingeach wasdata reportedset:

1. Cabinet inOffice [monthSenior Officials Expenses Data
2. Cabinet Office Senior Officials Hospitality Data
3. Cabinet Office Senior Officials Meetings Data

Summary: This is a collection and collation page for an element of [your department] Senior Officials Transparency publications [published here: {your Senior Officials collation pages on gov.uk}.]

Guidance - Each CSV published on GOV.UK will be listed here, to month]enable [year].’easy underaccess to a single stream of data on Senior Officials. Please use the heading.naming conventions present on your www.gov.uk collation pages to ensure data is accurately described and dated to specific period and year.

Historical Data

Where possible - review historical datasets on www.gov.uk and convert these to CSV format for ease of use within both www.gov.uk and for referencing within www.data.gov.uk.
Do not ever archive or remove historical publications from www.gov.uk.