Dear Sir or Madam,

On 24 July I met with Tim Povall (Head of Finance - Regeneration)
under the Audit Commission Act 1998 in order to inspect invoices of
the Council accounts, which included the monthly invoices forwarded
for bills incurred by IPS Services to board up and maintain Council
owned vacant properties.

The process appears to be that 2020 Liverpool (administered by
Mouchel Parkman) has organized the contract between Liverpool City
Council and IPS Services (I have a very over-due FOI request for a
copy of this contract, which I will complain to the Information
Commissioner about in due course[1]).

It appears that each month 2020 Liverpool prints onto paper the
detailed 30 pages of invoices off a spreadsheet which they have
access to (listing the locations of all the vacant properties and
the nature of each cost incurred) and sends it hard-copy to the
Council with a cover sheet containing the number for the total
bill.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, I would like a copy of the
spreadsheets provided by IPS Services to their paying customer (the
Council) in their original electronic format for the months of
January to June 2008.

[1] http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/ip...

Yours faithfully,

Julian Todd.

Thank you for your e-mail.

This e-mail confirms we have received your enquiry.

We will endeavour to respond to this enquiry within 24 hours, but please
note that during

busy periods it may take up to 3 working days to reply to you.

In the mean time, you will be able to find the answers to commonly asked
questions on our
website: www.liverpool.gov.uk .

Please do not respond to this e-mail as it has been generated
automatically.

Liverpool Direct
Winner - 'Best in Public Sector', Call Centre

Association Excellence Awards 2004 Liverpool,

European Capital of Culture 2008

show quoted sections

Dear Mr Todd

FOI REQUEST - 35663

IPS Services monthly invoices

Many thanks for your recent communication requesting information under the
Freedom of Information Act 2000, dated 25 August 2008, which was received in
my office today.

Once your request has been actioned either myself or a colleague will
respond to you.

I should be grateful if you would quote the above FOI Request No in all
future communications.

Yours sincerely

Wendy Twigge
Information Manager

show quoted sections

Dear Mr Todd

Please find attached our response to your request and identified
enclosures to conclude your request

Regards

Wendy Twigge

Information Manager

Tel: 0151 225 3132

show quoted sections

Dear Wendy Twigge,

Thanks for writing back with the email attachments.

I am now asking for a review of this response to my FOI request of
25 August 2008 for the invoices of IPS Services in electronic form
based on the following two complaints:

1) I requested that the information be disclosed in its native
electronic spreadsheet form, not as a low quality scan of a printed
document.

The Council has informed me that it does not receive invoices from
IPS Services in electronic form. Although I have not been able to
see the contract with IPS Services (owing to the Council having
lost its copy), it is reasonable to assume that the Council has a
right to this information, held on its behalf, in an electronic
form that could be used for basic auditing functions.

Such functions would include identifying which of its properties
incur the greatest costs in order to conduct an informal
investigation of them. On the other hand, receipt of such detailed
invoices in paper form provides the Council (or 2020 Liverpool)
nothing more than an opportunity to rubber-stamp it.

I would be obliged if a request were made by the Council to its
contractor IPS Services for all future invoices to be sent
electronically in spreadsheet form, so that such computer-assisted
diligence (prohibitive with a hard copy) can be conducted, as well
as on behalf of my Freedom of Information request.

2) The financial quantities have been redacted by virtue Section 43
as being likely to prejudice the commercial interests of the IPS or
the Council in its businesses of making or saving money
respectively.

It does not escape notice that these interests are often in
conflict, and therefore cannot be argued independently of one
another.

The Council, in its citation of this exemption, provided no
arguments for this case, beyond the standard set of suppositions
without reference to the circumstances in question.

To make a case for an exemption of this information under Section
43, the Council would have to establish that (a) the information is
confidential, and (b) that a legitimate commercial prejudice could
result from disclosure.

(a) As you know, for 20 days every year these figures are publicly
available for inspection and copying pursuant to Section 15 of the
Audit Commission Act 1998. These figures cannot therefore remain
confidential for more than an average of 6 months. This inspection
regime is open to the commercial competitors of IPS for the purpose
of raising objections to the auditor, and nothing in the law
prevents these commercial competitors from copying and using the
information they discover to their own advantage.

Any argument about the status of confidentiality for this
information must take account of existing laws, such as the Audit
Commission Act, or it is invalid.

(b) Although I have not seen the contract between the Council and
IPS Services (because it is lost), it is reasonable to suppose that
no disclosure of information at this point will have any effect on
its business in terms of income and workflow -- the officers in the
Council who order the jobs from IPS are already party to the
figures, so their behavior (and therefore IPS's commercial income)
will not be affected by disclosure.

Therefore, commercial prejudice to IPS can only be considered in
light of a future retendering process for this contract. In such a
retendering process, if it included IPS among the bidders, the
Council's citation of the Section 43 exemption suggests that it
believes that IPS will have a commercial advantage over its
competitors by virtue of the non-disclosure of information about
the previous contract which it has the advantage of knowing.

Not only is this likely to be illegal under competitive law, it
discriminates against alternative suppliers, and is likely to
result in higher costs for the Council and the public purse.

I am fully conversant with the easily discredited assertions
routinely put forth to justify lack of transparency with regards to
costs and budgets of a public authority in relation to its
contracts and the fact that they are contradicted by the guidelines
and legislative purposes of the Freedom of Information Act. There
is no need to repeat them, especially when it clearly illustrates
the Council's bias against disclosure in its unwillingness to
consider any possible positive commercial benefits from
transparency (eg by attracting more competitive firms who recognize
that the Council is overpaying, even when its officers are unaware
of it) when it weighs the public interest test.

I am pleased to see that my comments about the inapplicability of
Sections 31 and 38 in my letter on 19 September have evidently been
noted. I look forward receiving the documents in a suitable form
without any redactions.

If, on the other hand, the investigator of my complaint is assigned
the task of writing a justification for a policy of non-disclosure
-- rather than reviewing it -- I must insist that the rejection of
my complaint demonstrate awareness of:

* The applicability of the Audit Commission Act 1998 to the
information in question.

* The contradiction between the Section 41 exemption and the
holding of a fair and competitive retendering process in which IPS
is one of the bidders.

Yours sincerely,

Julian Todd