Back office benchmarking

The request was partially successful.

Dear Sutton Borough Council,

Under the Freedom of Information Act, I would like to request back office statistics and information covering the following indicators below. Definitions for each of the indicators are according to those listed by the Cabinet Office in the following report:
http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/sites/de...

ORGANISATION
What is your current headcount as of 1st April 2011?
What was your headcount as of the day before the General Election?
How much grant funding do you receive?
What was your income for the last financial year?
What was your expenditure on salaries for the last financial year?
What was your 3rd party expenditure for the last financial year?

FINANCE INFORMATION
Organisational Running Costs
Cost of the Finance Function
% Cost of Finance Function
Cost of Finance per Head
Report cycle time
No. Finance Staff
No. Professionally Qualified Finance Staff
% Finance qualified
Cost of the HR Function %

HR INFORMATION
Cost of HR Function
Cost of HR per Head
No. Organisation Employees
No. HR Staff
Ratio of employees (FTE) to HR staff
Average Working Days Lost to sickness (AWDL)
Employee experience of Performance Management
Employee experience of Learning & Career Development
Employee experience of Positive Working Environment

IT INFORMATION
"Run and Maintain" Resource (RDEL) IT Expenditure
"Run and Maintain" Resource (RDEL) IT Expenditure … of which Depreciation
"Run and Maintain" Capital (CDEL) IT Expenditure
Total 'run & maintain'  IT Spend
Total Project Costs
% Cost of IT
Overall stakeholder perspective

PROCUREMENT INFORMATION
Cost of the Procurement Function
% Cost of Procurement Function
Total third party spend
Third party spend on SMEs (direct)
Third party spend on SMEs (indirect)
Procurement function costs as a percentage of total Procured Spend
% third party spend channelled to SMEs
No. Procurement Staff
No. Professionally Qualified Procurement Staff
% Procurement qualified

ESTATES & PROPERTY INFORMATION
Cost per FTE
Area per office based FTE
Cost per square metre
Property: Corporate Governance
Property: Capacity & Capability
Property: Policies & Standards
Property: Data & Management Information Systems
Property: Performance Management Review & Audit

COMMUNICATIONS INFORMATION
Total Cost of Communications
% Cost of communications
Number of communications staff
Proportion of all staff working on communications
Number of Professional communicators
Proportion of Professional communicators
Comms alignment to business objectives

LEGAL INFORMATION
Total cost of legal services
Legal costs: of which for 'technical' legal work
Legal costs: of which for legal admin and support work
% Cost of Legal Services
Legal % spend on technical work (not admin)

KNOWLEDGE AND INFORMATION MANAGEMENT (KIM)
Total cost of KIM
% Cost of KIM
Quality: % FOI/EIR requests addressed "in time"
Quality: No. of datasets made available on data.gov.uk
KIM Survey: % measure of how well staff can access information to allow them to function effectively

Yours faithfully,

Brian Farnet

Freedom Of Information, Sutton Borough Council

Dear Mr Farnet,

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 2000 - INFORMATION REQUEST - REF NO - 2993
(please quote in correspondence)

I acknowledge your request for information received on Monday 4 April 2011
relating to back office benchmarking.

Your request is being considered and, if it is held, you will receive the
information requested within the statutory timescale of 20 working days as
defined by the Freedom of Information Act 2000, subject to the information
not being exempt or containing a reference to a third party.

If appropriate, the information may be provided in paper copy, normal font
size. If you require alternative formats, e.g. language, audio, large
print, etc. then please let me know.

For your information, the Act defines a number of exemptions which may
prevent release of the information you have requested. There will be an
assessment and if any of the exemption categories apply then the
information will not be released. You will be informed if this is the
case, including your rights of appeal.

If the information you request contains reference to a third party then
they may be consulted prior to a decision being taken on whether or not to
release the information to you. You will be informed if this is the case.

A fee may be payable for this information. This will be considered and you
will be informed if a fee is payable. In this event the fee must be paid
before the information is processed and released. The 20 working day time
limit for responses is suspended until receipt of the payment.

Yours sincerely

FOI Admin Officer

London Borough of Sutton

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Freedom Of Information, Sutton Borough Council

Dear Mr Farnet

I refer to our acknowledgement of 4 April in response to your FOI request
ref 2993. I apologise for the delay in replying.

Your request asks 60 separate questions and was passed to the various
services within the council for response. Unfortunately we consider the
work required to provide responses to all such questions will exceed the
time limit allowed in the legislation, being 18 hours of officer time at
£25 an hour and the bulk of your request is therefore refused under S12
of the legislation.

However in a bid to be helpful and provide assistance as required under S6
of the Act, I have provided below a response to some of your questions,
where that information was available either from easily accessible council
records, or from responses to previous FOI requests.

I also attach a link to the "Budget and Delivery Plans 2011/12" page on
the council's website which provides copies of documents for the
individual groups within the council, and provides figures for "back
office" departments such as Human Resources, Finance, Construction &
Property with FTE figures.
([1]www.sutton.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=4632)

I also attach the link to the page on our website where you can find our
Statement of Accounts

[2]www.sutton.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=492. Please be advised our draft
accounts for 2010/11 will be available on the council's website hopefully
in the next couple of weeks.

Organisation

Total employment in full time equivalents

2008/2009 2009/2010
Chief Executives 99.73 101.43
Adult Social Servs & Hsg 416.99 447.83
Environment and Leisure 604.56 619.36
Children, Young People & Learning
Services 715.54 762.60
Resources 349.24 387.11
OVERALL 2186.06 2318.33
excluding schools

How much grant funding do you receive? Revenue support grant (a subsidy
all authorities receive) £55.256m and core grants £31.744m.

Finance

Organisational Running Costs Gross cost (excluding direct schools
expenditure) £330m

Cost of the Finance Function £3.85m

% Cost of Finance Function 1.2%

Report cycle time? Formal monthly and quarterly reporting. Produced 10
days after month end. Finance monitoring and data available continuously
in real time.

No. Finance Staff 68 (AAT or CCAB)

No. Professionally Qualified Finance Staff 35

% Finance qualified 51%

Human Resources

Average working days lost to sickness 2009/10 8.2 (including schools 7.5)

Employee experience of performance management - information not held

Employee experience of learning & career development - information not
held

Employee experience of positive working environment - information not held

Legal Services (data as at 01-04-11)

Total costs of legal services - £2,076,300

Legal costs of which for "technical "legal work - £2,051,422

Legal costs - admin and support £24,877

% costs of legal services 1.19%

Legal % spend on technical work (not admin) 98.80%

IT

Run and Maintain resource (RDEL) IT expenditure - £3m

Of which depreciation £664,500

Run and Maintain capital expenditure £500k

Total Run and Maintain IT expenditure £3.5m

Overall stakeholder perspective - information not held

Knowledge and information mgt

% FOI requests responded to "in time" - 86% 2010/11

I am sorry we have not been able to provide a complete response to your
questions. If you remain unhappy you can request an internal appeal and
ultimately complain to the office of the Information Commissioner (ICO).
Alternatively you may refine your request so that it can be responded to
within the statutory timeframe.

Yours sincerely

Sarah Milne

Corporate Customer Care Manager

London Borough of Sutton

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