FOI Ref: 0069FOI1920 

6^th August 2019 

Freedom of Information Act 2000 – Request for Information/ Outcome of Public Interest Test 

Further to your request for information and completion of a Public Interest Test to determine whether or not certain information should be disclosed. We are pleased to respond to your request for and our response is set out below: 

Request/ Response 

Under FOI legislation, I would like to ask you to kindly provide me with the below information for the CCG. 

Please can you provide financial information relating to the:

• total cost of interpreting services in the last 2 years and the number of requests made
• total cost of translation services in the last 2 years and the number of requests made
• total cost of BSL interpreting in the last 2 years and the number of requests made 

The expenditure and number of requests includes both interpreting and BSL services. We don't currently commission a document translation service.  

Year	Expenditure on interpreting services	No. of requests made
2017/18	£756,588	3288
2018/19	£750,564	3792

  I would also be grateful if you could provide us with information that includes: 

• Hourly cost of face to face interpreting services
• Cost per minute of telephone interpreting services 

Section 43 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 provides a qualified exemption from disclosure where disclosure would, or would be likely to prejudice the commercial interests of any person, including the public authority holding it. The CCG is of the view that release of this information would, or would be likely, to prejudice the commercial interests of both the bidders for the service and those of the CCG. In order to apply a Section 43 exemption, the CCG has conducted a statutory public interest test to decide whether the balance of public interest lies in withholding or releasing the information.  

This CCG has given much weight to the arguments in favour of transparency, openness and accountability as well as wanting to encourage greater competition and response by business to new opportunities. However the test has demonstrated that at this particular time, the balance is in favour of withholding this information. 

The CCG considers that making pricing information public would be likely to enable competitors to undercut such proposals. As a result of the above, the CCG considers that disclosure of such information would provide competitors with an unfair competitive advantage and undermine bidders’ ability to compete on an equal footing in the market for such services or the wider health economy. Ultimately, this would be likely to reduce the likelihood of the bidders succeeding in future procurements for services of this type and would therefore be likely to prejudice the bidders’ commercial interests. This would be likely to have the knock-on effect of prejudicing future tenders for such services by the CCG and thus would be likely to prejudice the CCGs’ commercial interests also.  

• Breakdown of the top 10 most popular languages

Top 10 most used languages (not in order) Arabic, British Sign Language, Czech, Farsi, Hungarian, Polish, Punjabi, Slovakian, Somali, Urdu.  

How many video interpreting sessions were made last year for all languages, including British Sign Language? NHS Sheffield CCG are currently in the process of introducing video interpreting.  

Can you please provide details of your current provider(s) (company name, date contract was awarded)? Language Line Solutions, 31^st September 2017. 

When are your current language service contracts with your incumbent(s) due to end? The current contract ends in October 2019 but Sheffield CCG are currently in the process of extending this. 

Please can you provide the name, job title, email address and contact number for the person(s) responsible

• for awarding any contracts relating to these services
• for managing the day to day running of the services

Isabelle Barker, Contract Manager (0114 305 1000).

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