FOI reference - FOI-139
Date - 21 July 2023
Request
Please may you provide me, in Microsoft Excel or an equivalent electronic format, with a list of invoices that were not paid within 30 days for the last 6 financial years (2017/18 to 2022/23 inclusive) which would feed into the Regulation 113 Notice you are required to publish each year as part of your obligations under The Public Contracts Regulations 2015, with the following information for each invoice (where available):
- The name of the Supplier.
- Supplier email address.
- Supplier company registration number.
- Supplier postal address.
- Supplier telephone number.
- Supplier website.
- The date of the invoice.
- The invoice reference.
- The gross value of the Invoice.
- The date the invoice should have been paid by.
- The actual payment date of the invoice.
- The total amount of interest liability due to late payment of the invoice.
- The total amount of interest paid to the supplier due to late payment of the invoice.
For the avoidance of doubt we request the data behind payment performance summaries for Regulation 113 Notices, not the summaries themselves.
We expect that this information to be readily available and easily accessible in the electronic format requested given the necessity of source data which must have been required to prepare and produce the Regulation 113 Notice.
If it is not possible to provide the information requested due to the information exceeding the cost of compliance limits identified in Section 12, or for another reason, please provide advice and assistance, under the Section 16 obligations of the Act, as to how I can refine my request.
Response
I confirm that we hold the information you have requested. However, some of the information you have requested is exempt from disclosure.
Please find attached, in the format requested, information we are able to provide the:
- name of the supplier
- date of the invoice
- invoice reference
- gross value of the invoice
- date the invoice should have been paid by
- actual payment date of the invoice
- total amount of interest liability due to late payment of the invoice
- total amount of interest paid to the supplier due to late payment of the invoice
To clarify, we have used the ‘creation date’ (Column C) as the invoice date. This is the date which we receive the invoice. Column D has the data in which the invoice was dated by the supplier.
Column I shows ‘the total amount of interest liability due to late payment of the invoice’.
I can confirm the total amount of interest paid to suppliers due to late payment of an invoice is £0.
The following information has not been disclosed as it is exempt under section 40 of the FoIA 2000:
- the name of the supplier
In this instance, any names of the supplier have been exempt from disclosure as the supplier is a sole trader and this constitutes personal data.
The following information has not been disclosed as it is exempt under section 21 of the FoIA 2000:
- supplier email address.
- supplier company registration number.
- supplier postal address.
- supplier telephone number.
- supplier website.
Exemptions
Section 21 – Information accessible to applicant by other means
I can confirm that we hold this information. However, it is exempt from disclosure under Section 21 of the FoIA. This is because the information is accessible to you, as it is already in the public domain which you will be able to collate with the other information (the name of the supplier) we have provided you with.
A public interest test is not required for the use of this exemption.
Section 40 – Personal information
This information is exempt from disclosure under section 40 (personal information) of the FoIA. This is because the information constitutes personal data as defined in the UK General Data Protection Regulations (UK GDPR). Disclosing this would not comply with the data protection principles set out in the UK GDPR, in particular the requirement for processing to be fair, lawful and transparent (Article 5 (1)(a)), as well as to comply with one of the lawful bases for processing in Article 6. In this instance, any names of the supplier have been exempted for disclosure as the recipient is a sole trader and this constitutes personal data.
A public interest test is not required for the use of this exemption.