Thank you for publishing your spend data However, I notice that you haven't published any spending data since October 2020.

We understand that due to the COVID-19 pandemic it may not have been a priority to publish your spending data. However, we strongly believe that the spending data is critical to understanding how Government functions and this data is vital for our work. We would be extremely grateful if you could update this information as soon as reasonably possible.

1. We’ve decided to continue to use the FOI process to request data as this gives us both a formal structure for making and responding to requests. So, I'd like to make a request under the Freedom of Information Act for all transactions over £500 from November 2020 to at most a quarter in arrears from the date at which you publish in response to this request.
The Council is applying Section 22: Future exemption to this request. We understand that there has been a delay in publishing this and we are in the process of catching up on our datasets following Covid-19 recovery and the end/start of financial year which meant our Finance team have been very busy with. We are looking to update the missing months in due course.

Review:

The applicant has asked for an internal review of this request as they do not believe that the exemption should be applied as it does not follow the Transparency Code rules that the Government have published.

The Transparency Code does say we should be publishing the month after the quarter has finished and it was fully intended that information should be published as usual. However, this has not been a normal year for us as a Local Authority with the pressure of our work connected to Covid. Officers have had to combine their normal posts with helping with the Surge Testing, for example, causing substantial delays. The officers responsible for providing this information are trying to get back on track with this and should begin to publish in time again after the next update. I understand that the information will be published, as planned. The s22 exemption does not require the Local Authority to have a publication date in place, however the published spreadsheet has been updated as far as possible, in the circumstances.