Income from Schools

“I am writing to you under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to request the following information.  Please provide the information in the Excel template provided (attached).

 1.  What was the total income received from each of the following types of school, for each of the following years; 2013/14, 2014/15, 2015/16, 2016/17, 2017/18:

  • maintained secondary and primary schools within the LA boundary
  • non-maintained (e.g. academy) primary, secondary and all through schools within the LA boundary
  • other schools within the LA boundary (e.g. special, private)
  • schools outside of the LA boundary

 If unable to distinguish between the above sources of income then please state the total income from all schools for each of these years.

Unfortunately, Devon County Council (DCC) is unable to supply you with the information you request under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act.  Under the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 public authorities are not obliged to comply with requests which exceed the cost limit of £450 (equating to 18 hours of time).

Whilst the information you have requested does sit within our electronic and paper filing systems, these systems are not set up to easily provide us with the type of information you have requested.  This is not the sort of information we would need for our own day to day business purposes.

By way of explanation, please note that for debtor/external invoices the transaction entries would tell us where the money came from by way of the Entity name but for every other source of income we would only be able to see where the transaction has been allocated to, before having to drill-down into the granular detail of the transaction to find its source. There are specific income codes for things such as Mutual Fund insurance, but for general purposes, any code can be used by schools and would need interrogating, entry by entry.

In order to retrieve the requested information, we would have to download all income transactions from our electronic Finance system, FINEST, for each year (tens, potentially hundreds of thousands each year) to identify whether or not the income has come from a school.  This would need to be done manually entry by entry.

On the conservative estimate of 10,000 income records each year and 30 seconds per transaction, we estimate that it would take in the region of 80 hours for each financial year to locate, retrieve and extract the requested information.  For the five financial years outlined in your request, we envisage that this would take circa 400 hours which is clearly well in excess of the 18 hours public authorities are required to spend responding to FOI requests.

However, if you are able to refine your request so that it may fall within the cost limit as described above, we would be happy to review your request.

Q2: How much income did the LA receive from all schools (in or out of borough, maintained or otherwise) for the following services within each year? 2013/14, 2014/15. 2015/16, 2016/17, 2017/18

  • Catering products and services
  • Cleaning products and services
  • Furniture & Flooring
  • ICT and ICT related resources
  • Playground equipment and services
  • HR
  • Finance
  • Health & Safety
  • Property & Building Services
  • School Improvement Services
  • Other services

 Information not held.  DCC does not hold this level of detail.  We would recommend that you re-direct your request to the schools themselves.  In the interests of providing advice and assistance, contact details for Devon schools are provided here.

 

Q3: How much was spent by all maintained primary and secondary schools on the following services within each year? 2013/14, 2014/15, 2015/16, 2016/17, 2017/18

  • Catering products and services
  • Cleaning products and services
  • Furniture & Flooring
  • ICT and ICT related resources
  • Playground equipment and services
  • HR
  • Finance
  • Health & Safety
  • Property & Building Services
  • School Improvement Services

Information not held.  DCC does not hold this level of detail.  We would recommend that you re-direct your request to the schools themselves.  In the interests of providing advice and assistance, contact details for Devon schools are provided here.

Q4. Please list all suppliers who currently provided the following services to your maintained primary and secondary schools.

  • Catering products and services
  • Cleaning products and services
  • Furniture & Flooring
  • ICT and ICT related resources
  • Playground equipment and services
  • HR
  • Finance
  • Health & Safety
  • Property & Building Services
  • School Improvement Services

Information not held.  DCC does not hold this level of detail.  We would recommend that you re-direct your request to the schools themselves.  In the interests of providing advice and assistance, contact details for Devon schools are provided here.