As part of the ODI Leeds Open Data Collaboration group (representatives from Barnsley, Bradford, Calderdale, Leeds, Stockport councils) we are exploring ways to improve local authority Business Rates data (NDR).

We've defined a common format for sharing Business Rates data. Once Local Authorities use that format we can add them to the visualisation.

We have a status table showing how well local authorities are publishing the data. This assigns a score based on the headings, coordinates, and dates as well as if the file is hosted externally in a way that can be accessed from a webpage.

If you are a Local Authority and want your data included in the visualisation tool or the status table, you should update your row in index.csv then submit a pull request. We'll use status.pl to rebuild the status table. If your file contains the Latitude, Longitude and Rateable value columns we will be able to include you in the visualisation.

Not every local authority has the tools, time, or skills to get everything just right. So we've made some tools to help with some common issues.

• If you don't have Latitude or Longitude but have a Postcode column, you can add the latitude and longitude using our postcodes to lat/lon tool.
• If your dates are not in ISO8601 format and you are having trouble getting them in that format (e.g. from Excel) we have created a tool to help clean up your CSV file.