1. Would you please be able to provide copy invoices for electricity, gas and water supplied to 1 Council owned or operated, non-residential property for 2021, 2022 and 2023, in pdf format? Ideally I would like to receive these copy invoices for one of the Council's larger buildings, but if that is in any way problematic, copy invoices for a random building would suffice. To clarify, I would like to receive copies of actual invoices as PDFs for this period, not a summary of utility consumption and costs.

The Council are refusing this request under Section 43 of the Act (Commercial Interests). In releasing invoices this will detail the pricing information which will allow for an unfair advantage to competitors. They would be able to analyse the data contained within these invoices which would give them an advantage in future tender and procurement processes. The Council have to consider getting the best value for money in using public funds with the services it provides and commissions. Releasing this information would not only harm the current provider, this could lead to the Council paying higher energy costs in the long run, and prevent us from getting the best value for money from future contracts. This would impact on our ability to negotiate and consider the tender applications in a fair manner. If the invoices were to be redacted then this would remove all the requested/required information from the below, leaving indecipherable information behind which holds no value – it would not be a productive use of resources to carry out redaction work to numerous invoices which would provide no meaningful information in disclosing them.

It would not be in the Public Interest in releasing the information as to do so would hinder the Council in achieving the best value of public monies being spent. Therefore the exemption outweighs the public interest and the exemption applies.