I'm sorry but I had to register and respond to this thread instead of lurking as I have never in the last ten years of beinga governor seen such utter nonsense and misinformation passed on to people in our sector!
This request has gone to who knows how any schools nationally and is absolutely a perfectly valid FOI request. It is exactly what the FOI Act was for. And any school not responding to it is is breaking the law. You are putting your school at risk of ICO intervention, and your Governors and Headteacher should jolly well know better!! How utterly irresponsible to dismiss it so arrogantly or naively.
The amount of misinformation on here about data protection is also completely STAGGERING!!! Information about a company or school is NOT personal data! The only bit of the question that may be personal data is the name and direct contact of the person to contact... unless that's already on your school website, and then it's already in the public domain and must also be gven out.
The info they have asked for is NOT commercially sensitive. Trade secrets are, or some particular make up parts of contracts, but the total value of a contract is not. Financially sensitive is different to commercially sensitive. You also have to do a public interest test. It is in the public interest to reveal how much tax payers money is being paid out by schools. No-one will die if you release this totally innocuous info! School budgets are also releaseable under FOIA and how much you pay for your contracts.
To say it will take too long to do... How on earth can it take you over 18 hours to just tell someone who your printing supplier is and how much you pay them in a year? Just no, you can easily find such info. Or I would suggest you sack your bursar / office manager.
I am shocked at how rude people have been about this company who may genuinely be able to offer you a better deal! The whole point of FOI is to open up such spending of public money (not YOUR money) and be able to offer competitively priced quotes. This company is doing their research and could be fantastic for all you know, and because they write you a letter, you try and make out they are the devil and no-one should consider them? You're lucky they don't take action against you!!
If there are any Chair of Governors on here, you need to get trained and get smart about FOI requests before you get yourself and your schools into a whole load of trouble, because this thread is showing such a lack of awareness about this legal requirement it's terrifying. Not to mention the dreadful attitude to transparency and openness!
