Dear D. Boucher,

Your complaint that the Council breached the Freedom of Information Act (Enquiry reference: 810002201)

Thank you for giving us an opportunity to review your complaint regarding your Freedom of Information request, and make sure that we have done all we can to put things right for you.

Your information request on 26 January 2010 was for:

The amounts paid by each school in Haringey to third parties in relation to temporary staffing cover. My hope is to receive an electronic breakdown of amounts paid (a) through the department's purchase ledger by school and (b) in grants, by grantee.

1. I would like the information in electronic format. This should avoid any printing cost issues.

2. In order to avoid your having to collate information from peripheral systems, I am willing to accept information only from your main system (I would like you to advise which system this is). By main system I mean the system that handles the largest part of the department's expenditure. If grants and supplier payments are made through separate systems, then I would like you to choose the main system for each.

3. The information I require for each supplier/grantee is: Supplier name and total amount paid.

4. I would like the information to cover the year 2008/9. I would accept 2007/8 figures if this is not possible.

On 2 February 2010 Ms Ravia Zaman, Complaints Manager, responded to your information request saying the information was not held centrally and you should contact the individual schools directly.

On 24 February 2010 you requested an internal review:

I would assume that yearly financial accounting takes place, collating all information from your schools, and that a central system holds this information.

I am happy, if it proves easier, to accept a simple School - Total Spend spreadsheet, from the best data you have available.

Having reviewed your request and the original response I can confirm that in Haringey schools are responsible for their own staffing and budget. Each Local Authority will differ in the way it manages day-to-day schools data, all our schools have their own bank accounts and will make their own payments to their suppliers, which is why we cannot provide supplier details from central systems.

We hold annual financial information for schools following the national Consistent Financial Reporting (CFR) requirement (please see: Value for money ). This includes the amounts of agency payments for supply teaching staff (please see the attached table). Although it does not provide the supplier details - I hope you will find it useful.

To conclude, I uphold your complaint. Although we did not have the precise information that you requested, we should have supplied the attached table and explained why we could not provide details of the suppliers. I have drawn this to the attention of the officers responsible for dealing with FOI requests in our Children & Young People's Service.

I hope that you are satisfied with my response to your complaint. If you are dissatisfied, you may complain to the Information Commissioner, who may be able to help you. Please note that if you wish to refer this case to the Information Commissioner, they ask that you do so within two months of our response to you.

You can contact the Commissioner at:

Yours sincerely

Sirkku Pietikainen

Feedback and Information Officer

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