Keeping tabs on the UK’s parliaments & assemblies
Mayoral scrutiny: building an ecosystem of accountability
18 November 2025 @ 10:03 am
Mayors and combined authorities are the future of devolution in England, but the ways in which citizens can understand, scrutinise, or influence them remain unclear. Our latest report, Mayoral scrutiny: supporting an ecosystem of accountability organisations, argues that devolution will not deliver on its promises unless we also invest in new forms of civic and…
Running open LLM models
18 November 2025 @ 10:03 am
Most discussion and usage of LLMs is focused on high profile closed models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT family, and Google’s Gemini – which are widely available and integrated into a range of existing products and services. Because these are closed models, access and hosting of the models is controlled by the companies that create them.…
Using LLM tools to build APPG scrapers
18 November 2025 @ 9:58 am
Recently we wrote about why we’re now listing APPGs in TheyWorkForYou. This blog post goes into more detail about the technical process we use to gather who is a member of an APPG. We have two methods of getting the memberships of APPGs. The first is finding if it’s already published on their website. The…
“I found inspiring things happening in councils all over the UK, pockets of brilliance!”
10 November 2025 @ 9:38 am
Our partner organisation Climate Emergency UK put us in touch with Mat Allen, based in Northern Ireland. They described him as “one of our most dedicated Scorecards volunteers” — and when we heard what he’s been up to, we could certainly see why. Volunteering for CE UK is, for many, an opportunity to do something tangible…
A key moment to strengthen Scotland’s Freedom of Information law
7 November 2025 @ 12:48 pm
The UK has two Freedom of Information laws – one that covers Scottish public authorities and one that covers public authorities in the rest of the UK. While similar to the UK law in many respects, we think there are a number of practical ways the Scottish system improves on the wider system of FOI…
“Shining a light on what our councils are doing — good and bad.”
4 November 2025 @ 3:07 pm
The Council Climate Action Scorecards are only possible thanks to the work of volunteers, who attend training from Climate Emergency UK before going off to gather the multitude of data required to assess the climate action of every council in the UK. We’re always keen to hear from volunteers about what motivates them, and any…
Our transparency rules need to adapt to the rise of AI
30 October 2025 @ 11:47 am
The government is making a significant investment into AI in public services, and systems are changing apace. AI is increasingly being deployed in every department of government, both national and local, and often through systems procured from external contractors. In a recent article for Public Technology, mySociety’s Chief Executive Louise Crow flags that we urgently…
TheyWorkForYou Update: A richer view of Parliament
23 October 2025 @ 4:13 pm
We want to improve the quality of UK democracy by making more and better information about Parliament available to everyone. In previous updates to TheyWorkForYou, we’ve expanded the range of official sources the service pulls on: extending to cover all the UK’s parliaments, and recently bringing together all the registers of interest in one place. …
Improving TheyWorkForYou email alerts
23 October 2025 @ 3:54 pm
You can subscribe to TheyWorkForYou’s alerts to receive email updates on representatives’ parliamentary speeches and questions — but they’re also strongly used by civil society as a parliamentary monitoring tool, letting organisations know when their topics of interest have been mentioned in debates or votes. Our alerts help the flow of information from Parliament through…
Future boundaries for devolved legislatures
23 October 2025 @ 10:49 am
The Scottish Parliament and the Senedd are both holding elections in May 2026, and the Northern Ireland Assembly will be holding an election before May 2027. All of these elections will take place on different boundaries to their current constituencies and, in the case of the Senedd, under a new voting system. As the boundaries…