Councils are under pressure to deliver better services with fewer resources. CFO Insights provides clear financial insight to support confident, evidence-based decisions that improve outcomes. 

Local government is navigating rising demand, tightening budgets, and growing scrutiny. You need to act quickly - but with confidence.

CFO Insights gives you a powerful, three-dimensional view of your income and spend, linking financial data to service outcomes and the socio-economic realities of the communities you serve.

With the ability to compare your performance across councils in England  - and benchmark against your true statistical neighbours - you can move beyond data and into action. 

With CFO Insights, you can:

  • Identify top performers instantly - See which authorities are delivering the best outcomes - and learn from them
  • Benchmark with precision - Compare yourself against socio-economically similar councils, not just geographic neighbours
  • Visualise data with clarity - Explore insights through intuitive maps, charts, spider diagrams, and league tables
  • Segment intelligently - Filter by authority type, region, core cities, or key cities
  • Aggregate and analyse quickly - Combine datasets to generate new insights in seconds 
  • Save time and effort - Reduce the time spent searching for data and focus on what matters - decision-making 
The video is playing. This video is playing in mini-player mode.

Contextualise spend 

Understand spend levels in the context of place and socio-economic dynamics to pinpoint areas for improvement 

Identify best practices 

See spend in context of outcomes and versus statistical nearest neighbours to identify higher performing peers and improve decision making. 

Highlight outliers 

Establish lines of enquiry to promote efficiency by generating clear evidence you can communicate effectively 

Get in contact with our experts

Claire Hampson

Director
London  Office
View full profile

Chris Ilsley

Assistant Manager
London  Office
View full profile
    Analysis produced from CFO insights is valued across the council. The main benefit of CFO insights for me is the ability to focus upon outcomes as well as costs.
    Guy Lonsdale Deputy S151 Officer, North East Lincolnshire Council
    CFO insights is an important element of our medium-term financial planning.
    Matt Bowmer Head of Finance, Vale of Glamorgan
    Green park
    Case study

    Empowering Vale of Glamorgan through rapid data insight

    Find out more
    The challenge:
    Vale of Glamorgan faces budget pressure, prompting the need for evidence-based savings and transformation strategies. They seek to understand best practices from other Welsh authorities for change initiatives.
    The solution:
    We provided benchmarking analysis for two council budget cycles, aligning insights to socio-economic context and key challenges.
    The result:
    The council has used the benchmarking analysis to shape its transformation programme, and to identify opportunities for both change and savings generation over the short and long term.
    Town river image
    Case study

    Outcomes based framework for budget setting

    Find out more
    The challenge:
    North East Lincolnshire Council needed to overcome hurdles to align with their new budget approach, prompting the need for evidence-based decision making to influence members to take informed key decisions.
    The solution:
    We provided CFO insights to the council which helped push considerations towards relative performance against multiple financial and outcome measures whilst still highlighting key characteristics.
    The result:
    The CFO insights used has offered the council the ability to focus upon outcomes as well as costs which have influenced internal communications positively.
    town centre image
    Case study

    Helping Wirral Council with their service reviews

    Find out more
    The challenge:
    Wirral Intelligence Services (WIS) looked to improve their understanding of the differentials in outcome measures of the council compared to other local authorities.
    The solution:
    Achieving multiple outcomes, through in-depth reviews of different internal and external services, our insights were used to understand constraints in decision and approval times, further understanding how to overcome barriers.
    The result:
    Valuable information was generated from the required evidence gathered from our CFO insights. Helping raise the profile of work being undertaken within planning.

      Are you already using CFO insights?

      Access your account to continue tracking your spend.

      Log in