Internal Supplies - FOI Response Register

Please provide the following information:

1. A description of how your health board’s internal supplies procurement system works. By this I mean ‘how do your staff order material supplies as part of their job, how are those orders handled, what are they able to order, and how does this vary with rank and position?’ I intend here to exclude significant capital items (e.g. beds, machines, surgical tools etc.) and medicines.

NHS Shetland uses the NHS Scotland national eProcurement system, PECOS. It allows registered staff to place orders which are then passed to the appropriate budget holder for authorisation before the purchase order is released to the supplier. The approval matrix is aligned to the Board’s Scheme of Delegation which is detailed on the NHS Shetland website below.

Corporate Governance Handbook – NHS Shetland

2. List of products purchased through this internal system, annually, from 2018 to present, with volume and expense on each.

Q2 – Q5: in relation to information prior to June 2018, in accordance with FOISA s 17 NHS Shetland confirms that it does not hold the information requested. NHS Shetland moved to the current electronic ordering system in June 2018 and information prior to this is not held in a form that can be retrieved.

Q2 – Q5: In accordance with FOISA s 16(1), NHS Shetland confirms that it holds the information requested but that it is exempt from disclosure under FOISA s 33(1)(b) as the disclosure would, or would be likely to, result in substantial prejudice to the commercial interests of NHS Shetland’s suppliers.

The publishing of volume and expense information at the individual product level would be likely to result in substantial prejudice to suppliers as other customers of those suppliers could use the information in renegotiation/renewal of their contracts with said suppliers to negotiate terms that are less favourable to said suppliers commercial interests.

Whilst acknowledging the general public interest in the disclosure of information by public authorities, on balance, the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs that of disclosure. This is due to the public interest in public bodies being able to negotiate contracts with more favourable pricing structures than that of the suppliers other customers.

Additionally, the public interest in ensuring a competitive tendering process is against disclosure as firms would be discouraged from bidding for future tenders if pricing information could be revealed whilst it is still commercially sensitive.

Furthermore, the public interest in ensuring oversight of expenditure of public funds is still served by the information released, as information on NHS Shetland expenditure on various categories of goods is being released.

While NHS Shetland is not able to release the information exactly as requested, we are able to provide information summarised by product category and by annual expense.

Please see the attached spreadsheet for details. Note that paper tissues come under the GENERAL SERVICES DOMESTIC category.

3. Total expense through this internal system
4. Your health board’s spending on tissues, monthly, from January 2018 to present. Please also break this down by facility.
5. Volume of tissues ordered by your health board, monthly, from January 2018 to present. Please also break this down by facility.
6. Existing policy and directives for staff in your health board for utilising internal supplies ordering processes.

NHS Shetland Standing Financial Instructions Section 12.

Corporate Governance Handbook – NHS Shetland

7. Changes to those policies and directives from 2015 to present.

None