Invoice information - not paid within 30 days

Request

Please may you provide me, in Microsoft Excel or an equivalent electronic format, with a list of invoices that were not paid within 30 days for the last 6 financial years (2017/18 to 2022/23 inclusive) which would feed into the Regulation 113 Notice you are required to publish each year as part of your obligations under The Public Contracts Regulations 2015, with the following information for each invoice (where available):

• The name of the Supplier
• Supplier email address
• Supplier company registration number
• Supplier postal address
• Supplier telephone number
• Supplier website
• The date of the invoice
• The invoice reference
• The gross value of the Invoice
• The date the invoice should have been paid by
• The actual payment date of the invoice
• The total amount of interest liability due to late payment of the invoice
• The total amount of interest paid to the supplier due to late payment of the invoice.

Response

Thank you for your request which has been processed under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).

In your email you have requested the following information:

Please may you provide me, in Microsoft Excel or an equivalent electronic format, with a list of invoices that were not paid within 30 days for the last 6 financial years (2017/18 to 2022/23 inclusive) which would feed into the Regulation 113 Notice you are required to publish each year as part of your obligations under The Public Contracts Regulations 2015, with the following information for each invoice (where available):

• The name of the Supplier
• Supplier email address
• Supplier company registration number
• Supplier postal address
• Supplier telephone number
• Supplier website
• The date of the invoice
• The invoice reference
• The gross value of the Invoice
• The date the invoice should have been paid by
• The actual payment date of the invoice
• The total amount of interest liability due to late payment of the invoice
• The total amount of interest paid to the supplier due to late payment of the invoice. I can confirm that the Gambling Commission does hold information falling within the scope of your request, however, some of this information is not stored in an extractable format.

Please note, where you have requested the supplier website, this information is not held by the Gambling Commission.

Where you have requested, Interest Liability & Interest Paid, this information is available and could be attributed to the late payment, however, this would require manual working in each instance. The following list details the number of transactions which would need to be manually assessed over the time period you have requested:

2017-2018 – 111 transactions
2018-2019 – 547 transactions
2019-2020 – 937 transactions
2020-2021 – 218 transactions
2021-2022 – 5 transactions
2022-2023 – 7 transactions

We estimate that it would take 5 minutes calculation time for each entry to generate the Interest Liability & Interest Paid you have requested which equates to approximately 150 hours.

Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) makes provision for public authorities to refuse requests for information where the cost of dealing with them would exceed the appropriate limit, which for public authorities, such as the Commission, is set at £450. This represents the estimated cost of one person spending 18 hours in determining whether the department holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting the information.

We estimate that it would take in excess of 18 hours to determine appropriate material and locate, retrieve and extract any relevant information in reference to your request as there is a high volume of records which may contain relevant information and would need to be reviewed individually.

When a public authority applies the Section 12 exemption to a request, the FOIA guidance specifically states that a public authority should avoid providing any information found as a result of a search as it denies the requestor the right to express a preference as to which parts of the request they may wish to receive within the appropriate time limit. Guidance on the application of section 12 can be viewed here:

https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1199/costs_of_compliance_exceeds_appropriate_limit.pdf (opens in new tab)

If you are able to narrow your request, we may be able to provide some data by working up to the time limit.

Until we are able to process the search and retrieval of the information you have requested, that can be provided within the statutory time limit, we are unable to ascertain if other exemptions will apply to the material retrieved, which would also prevent disclosure.

Please note, any refined request would be processed as a new request and the 20 working day statutory time limit would apply.

Review of the decision

If you are unhappy with the service you have received in relation to your Freedom of Information request you are entitled to an internal review of our decision. You should write to FOI Team, Gambling Commission, 4th floor, Victoria Square House, Victoria Square, Birmingham, B2 4BP or by reply to this email.

Please note, internal review requests should be made within 40 working days of the initial response. Requests made outside this timeframe will not be processed.

If you are not content with the outcome of our review, you may then apply directly to the Information Commissioner (ICO) for a decision. Generally, the ICO cannot make a decision unless you have already exhausted the review procedure provided by the Gambling Commission.

The ICO can be contacted at: The Information Commissioner’s Office (opens in a new tab), Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF.

Information Management Team
Gambling Commission
Victoria Square House
Victoria Square
Birmingham B2 4BP