Information Team Croydon
Digital Services
Assistant Chief Executive Directorate
Bernard Wetherill House
7th Floor, Zone B
Croydon
CR0 1EA

Contact: Information Team
[email address]

Dear Hamid Abdallah

Request FOI/9987

Further to your request received on 21/05/2024, I confirm that the Council
has now considered your request under the Freedom of Information Act
2000. For ease of reference, I will now address each of your questions in
turn.

1. Please can I request the full list of supported living providers that
are contracted with your council.

This includes providers who care for adults & children for both learning
disabilities/autism and mental health needs.

Can I have:

Name of provider
Name of contact (point of contact)
Email
Phone Number
If they provide you services for adults, children or both
Current spend with the provider.
Can you also confirm your framework rates for both children and adults

If possible, can I request this in an excel sheet?

In terms of Adults: Please see attached a full list of all Supported
Living providers and the planned spend for the financial year 2023/2024.

In terms of current spend, The Council considers the cost information
requested to be commercially sensitive information and covered by the
exemption provided in Section 43 of Freedom of Information Act.  This
exemption applies to information which if disclosed would, or would be
likely to, prejudice the commercial interests of any legal person (an
individual, a company, the public authority itself or any other legal
entity) and thus the Dynamic Purchasing System rates have not been
provided.

It is important to remember that when information is released under the
Freedom of Information Act 2000, it is considered released to the wider
public. In deciding whether to apply this exemption the Council is
expected to balance the public interest test in withholding the
information against the public interest in disclosing the information.

Although there is always a clear case for transparency of council spend
and in informing the public how the council allocates taxpayer’s
resources, the information is considered, by the Council, to be
commercially sensitive as its disclosure would, or would be likely to,
prejudice the commercial interests of the Council, as it is considered
that if the information is disclosed to you it could potentially weaken
the Council ability to obtain value for money in respect of any future
purchases of this type.

For Children's:

The Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004
specify an “appropriate limit” for the amount of time the council needs to
spend undertaking that search.  If the council estimates that the time to
taken to locate, retrieve and extract the information requested will
exceed the appropriate limit, then under Section 12 of the Act, it is not
obliged to carry comply with that request.

The appropriate limit currently specified by the Regulations for local
authorities is £450. This represents the estimated cost of one person
spending two and a half working days in locating, retrieving and
extracting the information from where it is stored.

In order to provide the information you have requested, the council would
need to undertake a specific piece of work to review each case in order to
locate, retrieve and extract information. Specifically, we would need to
review files for all children looked after, those with learning
disabilities and those with mental health needs as this is not
triangulated with the names of all supported living providers. Also mental
health needs is a broad term which isn’t an indicator we track – we would
need clarity about the condition i.e a diagnosis and this wouldn’t capture
all children accessing supported accommodation. In addition - the level of
detail needed per provider, isn’t available if they are not currently
being used, and we would need to contact them to update etc. The
cumulative time it would take Council officers to do this would exceed the
“appropriate limit”.  Therefore, we are unable to disclose the information
you are seeking as it would take our officers in excess of 18 hours.

2. I would also like to request a comprehensive list of all of your
current housing providers in relation to supported living for both adults
and children.

Can I have:

Name of provider
Name of contact (point of contact)
Email
Phone Number

If possible, can I request this in an excel sheet also?

For Adult Social Care for supported living we commission the care provider
only and not a housing provider. Therefore we are unable to provide this
information as requested.

For children's, see above S12 exemption.
 

The Council publishes Access to Information requests and responses on its
online Disclosure Log. (Any request included within this log will be
anonymised appropriately)

To view the Council’s Disclosure Log, please visit our website available
here:

[1]The Freedom of Information (FOI) Act | Croydon Council
(disclosure-log.co.uk)

If you are dissatisfied with the way the Council has handled your request
under the Freedom of Information Act, you may ask for an internal review.
This should be submitted to us within 40 working days of this response.
You can do this by outlining the details of your complaint by:

Email:        [2][email address]

Writing:     Information Team

London Borough of Croydon

Bernard Weatherill House

Floor 7 - Zone B

8 Mint Walk

Croydon, CR0 1EA

Any requests received after the 40 working day time limit will be
considered only at the discretion of the council.

If you are not content with the outcome of the internal review, you have
the right to apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a
decision. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at:

Information Commissioner’s Office

Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire, SK9 5AF

Yours sincerely,

Information Team

Croydon Digital Services

Assistant Chief Executive Directorate

Bernard Wetherill House,

Mint Walk,

Croydon,

CR0 1EA

[3][email address]

[email address]

References

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