About Cornwall Political Watch

Our mission

Cornwall Political Watch exists to hold Cornwall's elected representatives to account through transparency. Council data is public, but it is scattered across multiple systems, buried in committee papers, and difficult for ordinary residents to navigate.

We collect, organise, and present this information in a way that makes it easy to see who is turning up, how they are voting, what they are claiming, and whether their conduct has been questioned.

This platform is strictly non-partisan. We have no political affiliation and do not endorse or oppose any party, group, or individual councillor. The data speaks for itself.

What we track

• Attendance records — which councillors are showing up to meetings, and which are not
• Committee memberships — who sits on which committees and how active they are
• Voting records — how councillors vote on decisions put before them
• Media coverage — local news articles mentioning councillors, matched automatically
• Twitter/X mentions — public social media activity related to councillors
• Expenses and allowances — what councillors claim from public funds
• Code of conduct cases — formal complaints and their outcomes
• Red flags — algorithmically detected patterns that warrant public attention

Data sources

All data on this site comes from publicly available sources. We do not use freedom of information requests, leaked documents, or insider knowledge.

• Cornwall Council's ModernGov portal — our primary source for councillor details, committee structures, meeting agendas, minutes, attendance records, and voting data
• RSS news feeds — BBC Cornwall, Cornwall Reports, and other local outlets for media coverage tracking
• Twitter/X API — public posts mentioning or by Cornwall councillors
• Cornwall Council published reports — annual expenses and allowances PDFs published under transparency requirements

How it works

An automated data pipeline runs weekly to collect the latest information from Cornwall Council and other sources. The pipeline scrapes structured data from the council's SOAP API and HTML pages, then processes and stores it for display.

Meeting summaries are generated using AI to make lengthy committee minutes more accessible. These summaries are clearly labelled and should not be treated as authoritative records — the full minutes are always linked for reference.

Red flags are detected algorithmically based on pre-defined thresholds. For example, a low attendance flag is raised when a councillor's attendance falls below 60%. No editorial judgement is applied — the system surfaces data points, not accusations.

Full details of the detection criteria and thresholds are documented on the methodology page.

Independence

Cornwall Political Watch is operated anonymously and independently. We receive no funding from political parties, campaign groups, trade unions, or any other organisation with a political interest.

There is no advertising on this site. We do not sell data. We do not accept sponsored content.

We believe that council data, paid for by public money, should be freely accessible to the public it serves. All data displayed on this site is derived from open sources and presented without editorial bias.

Contact

If you have a tip, a correction, or feedback about the data on this site, we want to hear from you. Use our anonymous contact form to get in touch. We do not collect your name, email, or any identifying information.