FOI request (FOI226162)

Commissioned services

Requested Tue 19 December 2017
Responded  Tue 19 December 2017

For the financial years 2014-15, 2015-16 and 2016-17 (and giving individual figures for each year), please tell me how much of council funds was paid to outside agencies or private sector contractors for the provision of any council services - to put this another way, what was the total value of services commissioned by the council, and therefore not provided by the council's own employees?

How much was spent, or what was the total cost to the council or services provided in-house (not by an external contractor) for each financial year.

What was the council's full budget for each financial year?

For the year 2016-17 only, please provide a list of all external contractors for the provision of council services and how much was paid to, or invoiced to each.

Does the council have a policy to refer to service users as customers, clients, residents, taxpayers, or otherwise, in its documentation and web material? Please specify which.

Response

Please accept my apologies for the delay in responding.

NOTICE OF REFUSAL

The information you have requested would require us to look at each individual supplier (we have 13,000 set up) to determine whether they are a commissioned service and our coding structure does not differentiate these types of costs i.e. a lot of accounts will be mixed and have to be manually checked therefore would exceed the time limit set out by the Information Commissioner therefore under S12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 provides an exemption from the obligation to comply with a request for information if the estimated costs of complying with that request would exceed the prescribed appropriate limit.  We estimate that the costs of complying with your request would exceed the appropriate limit by a significant amount.  For this reason we feel unable to comply with this question.