Fair Finance has been leading the calls for greater transparency and accountability of lending institutions since their first Disclosure Report in 2005. Without lending disclosure there is very little information about the financing or investment in our poor communities. In the USA where this is mandatory under the Community Reinvestment Act, government, banks and local communities have come together using this data to help lever $4.5trillion into underinvested communities since 1977.

The Social Investment Taskforce in the UK called for voluntary bank lending disclosure in 2000, 2003 and again 2005, and so far the response has been woefully inadequate by the industry.

Having decided to take the step in seeing if this was possible on a limited budget we were approached be Fair Finance to see if we could assist. Working in partnership with FoxLand we were able to produce a series of reports showing what a form of disclosure could look like, by putting all the lending data by geography, demography and ethnicity online for anyone to see. The functionality includes interactive maps (flash fed by xml updates), database driven reports and charts all periodically updated by a secure data import mechanism to ensure the lending information remains up to date.

To find out more about Fair Finance or its disclosure maps visit: http://www.fairfinance.org.uk/where