For the financial years 2022/2023, 2023/2024 and 2024/2025
1. Those registered charities, charitable companies and Community Interest Companies that have been contracted, commissioned or grant aided by the Council.
2.The total value of the contract/grant/commission, and the purpose of the award, for each organisation.
The information requested is not held as requested, i.e., in one location or one system; and may be held by a number of officers, departments and services across a range of systems.
With regard to contracts and commissions, the Council does not hold a central list of all awarded contracts. It is only a requirement to publish awarded contracts over threshold (£10k). The majority of contracts with registered charities, charitable companies and/or Community Interest Companies are likely to be under the threshold required for publication and some may have been procured direct by service areas without the need for a procurement exercise. Therefore, these contracts are not recorded in a database or spreadsheet.
With regards to grants issued to registered charities, charitable companies and/or Community Interest Companies, again, this information is not recorded centrally. Grants can be issued by a range of different departments who all keep their own records. To provide this information would require a manual search of multiple records across multiple services, departments and systems over the period requested to identify and extract the requested information.
Therefore, this request is refused under section 12 (1) Freedom of Information Act 2000, since the cost of complying would exceed the appropriate limit set out in the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004.
In assessing the cost of complying, the costs attributable to officer time involved in complying have been considered. Such costs are limited to £450.00 under the Regulations, which equates to eighteen hours of officer time.
Section 16 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 sets out a duty for the Authority to provide advice and assistance to someone who has made a
request for information.
Under this provision, the Authority can advise a list of awarded contracts over threshold can be found on the Contract register on the OPEN portal. To view only North Tyneside Council’s Contract Register, click the yellow filter button and select North Tyneside Council from the drop-down list under “Authority” then select “Show Results”. You can also use the yellow filter button to narrow down your search to specific contract start and/or end dates as well as status. Details can then be exported using the Blue Export button above the results.
However, it should be noted that the contracts register only shows active contracts that are over threshold (£10k), and it does not record whether the contractors are registered charities, charitable companies and/or Community Interest Companies, nor does it differentiate between financial years.
It should also be noted that the Authority publishes all spend on goods and services over £250, however those records again would not identify which providers/suppliers are registered charities, charitable companies and/or Community Interest Companies, nor would it identify if the spend was a contract or commission or the purpose. This information can be found on the website here Transparency | North Tyneside Council
The Authority considers it would be able to provide a response to requests about specific registered charities, charitable companies and/or Community Interest Company within the appropriate limit.