25-26/021

We refer to your request for information (FOI 25-26/021) dated 18 June 2025 which we have handled under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act (FOISA).

You asked for the following:

1. Contract Register: Please provide a complete and current extract of your organisation’s contract register or equivalent database. We are not asking you to compile new information or manually populate missing fields – we simply request the register in its existing form, preferably in Excel or CSV format.

2. Total Number of Active Contracts: Please confirm the total number of contracts currently listed as active.

3. Procurement Strategy (2025/2026): Please provide your organisation’s Procurement Strategy for 2025/2026.

4. Contact information.

In an email sent on 18 June 2025, you stated that you had originally sent your request on 11 June 2025. You indicated that this email “may not have been successfully delivered” on 27 June 2025. Thank you for providing us with this clarification.

Contracts

Please find the record labelled “FOI 25-26-021-Records", as a copy of our Contracts Register, accompanying this response.

We have withheld some information in line with section 38(1)(b) of FOISA read with section 38(2A)(a)) as individuals could be identified by the data and disclosure of this into the public domain would be a breach of the first data protection principle. Such disclosure would be unfair in terms of the UK GDPR (Article 5(1)(a)) and therefore unlawful. The exemption in section 38(1)(b) is not subject to the public interest test.

We have also withheld some information in line with section 33(1)(b) of FOISA as disclosure would, or would be likely to, prejudice substantially the commercial interests of third parties we contractually engage.

There is a clear public interest in the transparency and accountability of public authorities, particularly in relation to how it conducts itself commercially. This is why GTC Scotland publishes its annual report and financial statements for public review through its website, which shows how we spend the teacher registration fees that fund our work. However, there is also considerable public interest in GTC Scotland entering into contracts with third parties who operate in a commercially sensitive environment and protecting their commercial information to ensure that those relationships are not compromised, and GTC Scotland’s reputation is not undermined. In this case, we consider that the public interest in withholding the request information outweighs the public interest in releasing it.

Additionally, we can confirm that, as data extracted on 25 June 2025, there were 50 active contracts appearing on the register.

Procurement

You also asked for our “procurement strategy” which is available on our website as a Procurement Policy. As this information is otherwise available, we have applied section 25(1) of FOISA to this query.

Contact Information

You also asked for contact information for the following individuals:

• Responsible officer for API access or data sharing (if applicable)
• Individual managing the contract register
• Finance Director
• Head/Director of Procurement or Purchasing
• Head/Director of ICT
• Head of Estates and Facilities
• Relevant Committee Member, Councillor, or Board Member for Procurement/Finance

Please note that disclosing this information would amount to a disclosure of the personal information of the employees in breach of section 38(1)(b) of FOISA. As such, we are unable to provide you with the names, job titles, email addresses and contact numbers of the person within GTCS responsible for these contracts.

However, in keeping with our duty to provide advice and assistance under section 15 of FOISA we can provide you with the shared mailbox which administers these contracts such as digital@gtcs.org.uk, finance@gtcs.org.uk, facilities@gtcs.org.uk and gtcs@gtcs.org.uk.

Additionally, please note that there is currently no online portal for the contracts register and we do not make use of contract management system.

You may contact informationgovernance@gtcs.org.uk if you are dissatisfied with this response, to request GTC Scotland conduct a review of it. You should describe the original request and explain your grounds of review. You have 40 working days from receipt of this decision to submit a review request. Should you remain dissatisfied following a review by GTC Scotland, you have a right to apply for a decision to the Scottish Information Commissioner under FOISA. Information about how to make an application to the Scottish Information Commissioner can be found on the Commissioner’s website.