Thank you for your request for information about the following:

For the last financial year, what was the total amount spent on translation costs?

Can you provide a breakdown of these costs by language translated.

Do you hire any dedicated translators? If so provide details of how many, total salary cost and for what language.

Your request was received on 22 November 2023 and I am dealing with it under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Response

Q1: The total spend for both translation and interpretation for the last financial year (2022/23):

Service Spend Telephone Interpreting £92,495.34 Translation / Transcription £11,950.30 Grand Total £104,445.64

Q2:
NHSBSA does hold the requested information. NHSBSA considers this information exempt from disclosure under Section 43(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, as releasing this information would adversely affect the commercial interests of NHSBSA.

Section 43(2) is a prejudice based ‘qualified’ exemption and is subject to the public interest test. This means that not only does the information have to prejudice one of the purposes listed, but before the information can be withheld, the public interest in preventing that prejudice must outweigh the public interest in disclosure.

Prejudice Test

A breakdown of the spend by language would be classed as commercially sensitive and could prejudice the incumbent supplier, as well as NHSBSA. NHSBSA have recently completed a tender for the new contract for language services and as part of this, potential bidders were provided with data for the total sum of minutes/words per language over the last 12 months. In addition, this information will be published on contracts finder when the winning supplier is published and therefore, this information will be in the public domain. By providing the spend broken down by language, the current supplier’s individual rates can be calculated when coupled with the volume data which has already been provided to potential suppliers for the current tender and will be made publicly available when published on contracts finder.
As result of this, the incumbent supplier would be prejudiced as any competitive supplier could amend the financial element of their bid to base their pricing unit on the current supplier, therefore puts other suppliers an unfair advantage.
The current supplier is highly likely to engage in future language services tendering exercises as they are a supplier appointed to the crown commercial services language services framework which is the mandated route for central government, arms-length bodies and other public sector organisations to procure language services. Their pricing unit will be used within future language services procurement as the framework sets out a table/matrix of services to call off from and consequently, the same services will be priced by the framework suppliers in all bids for all of the public sector organisations procuring language services using the CCS framework.
NHSBSA commercial interests would also be likely to be prejudiced if the current supplier’s pricing unit is disclosed as it would weaken NHSBSA’s future position as potential suppliers would not have the confidence that NHSBSA would keep sensitive financial information private and may discourage future suppliers from bidding. In addition, disclosing the information which allows the current suppliers unit price to be calculated may reduce the competitive nature and innovation in pricing when services are put out to retender as it could identify the price that NHSBSA is willing to pay for language services. This may cause future more economically efficient providers to raise their prices in line with that previously paid by NHSBSA. This would be likely to prejudice NHSBSA’s ability to obtain best quality of service and value for money when retendering.

Public Interest Test

Considerations in favour of disclosure:

• The inherent public interest in openness, transparency and accountability of public authority dealings.

• The public need that public authorities are spending money wisely and getting best value for money.

Considerations against disclosure:

• Disclosing information which allows the current suppliers unit price to be calculated may reduce the competitive nature and innovation in pricing when services are put out to retender as it could identify the price that NHSBSA is willing to pay for language services. This may cause future more economically efficient providers to raise their prices in line with that previously paid by NHSBSA. This would be likely to prejudice NHSBSA’s ability to obtain best quality of service and value for money when retendering. It is considered that paying more for services would not be in the public interest.

• Disclosing the requested information could weaken NHSBSA’s future position as potential suppliers would not have the confidence that NHSBSA would keep sensitive financial information private and may discourage future suppliers from bidding; this would not be in the public interest.

• NHSBSA believe that disclosing the requested information may decrease the effectiveness of any future competitive tender as it may prejudice NHSBSA’s ability to obtain best quality of service and value.

• NHSBSA believe that the points for disclosure are satisfied by the disclosure of the total spend for the last financial year at question 1. As such the granular detail of how much was spent per language does not need to be disclosed as this will cause a prejudice to both the current supplier and NHSBSA as outlined above.

Conclusion

NHSBSA recognises that there is a public interest in the disclosure of information which facilitates openness, transparency, and accountability in public authority dealings; however, there is an inherent public interest in NHSBSA being able to work in competitive markets, whereby the financial and reputational benefit is put to the wider public interest.
Having undertaken the balancing exercise, NHSBSA concludes that the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosure.

Q3. No dedicated translators (or interpreters) have been hired.

Please note that this request and our response is published on our Freedom of Information disclosure log at:

https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-01564

Data Queries

If you have any queries regarding the data provided, or if you plan on publishing the data please contact foirequests@nhsbsa.nhs.uk ensuring you quote the above reference. This is important to ensure that the figures are not misunderstood or misrepresented.

If you plan on producing a press or broadcast story based upon the data please contact communicationsteam@nhsbsa.nhs.uk This is important to ensure that the figures are not misunderstood or misrepresented.

The information supplied to you continues to be protected by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and is subject to NHSBSA copyright. This information is licenced under the terms of the Open Government Licence detailed at: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/

Should you wish to re-use the information you must include the following statement: “NHSBSA Copyright 2023” This information is licenced under the terms of the Open Government Licence:

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/

Failure to do so is a breach of the terms of the licence.

Information you receive which is not subject to NHSBSA Copyright continues to be protected by the copyright of the person, or organisation, from which the information originated. Please obtain their permission before reproducing any third party (non NHSBSA Copyright) information.