ActionAid UK: FTSE 100 tax haven tracker: the data

"When enquiries to individual companies failed to persuade them to disclose the information, we submitted complaints to Companies House, forcing companies to re-file their annual returns with the information included, and sparking Vince Cable to announce the launch of an investigation. ... Having compiled a full set of subsidiary listings, ActionAid was assisted by company information specialists www.duedil.com to process the data into a useable format. The annual returns, which in most cases were available only as scanned PDF files from Companies House, were converted to text using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software, after which extensive corrections were made."

Martin Belam: What open Government data gives us with one hand, closed state data takes away with another

Exactly right: "Using the Guardian's data explorer tool, you can get a comprehensive list of suppliers. Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could instantly cross-reference that with the records at Companies House? ... It would also be interesting to compare the sums being paid to a company's declared accounts. What sort of proportion of their turnover derives from state spending?"