FOI – 2024-000411 Fairtrade Purchasing (HTML)

Date received – 29 November 2024 | Date responded – 24 December 2024

Request

I am seeking some data regarding your annual Fairtrade purchasing.

Scottish Fair Trade is compiling information on Fair-Trade purchasing within public bodies, institutions, and organisations across Scotland for the 2023-24 edition of its report into Fairtrade expenditure and policy commitments within Scotland’s public sector. To understand how procurement policies were previously reported on and to read our recommendations, please review our last edition here.

Can you kindly provide data on your organisation’s annual spend on fairtrade goods across the April 2023 – March 2024 financial year?

Please include the below information, and please return the data in the attached template:

• Vendor name
• Whether they were contracted/non-contracted
• A description of item(s) purchased
• The total value per order
• Items purchased for resale (if applicable)

Please also provide your general policy on the procurement of fairly and ethically traded goods and services, in line with section 15(5)(b)(v) of the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014., if it is hosted online, please kindly share the link.

I am aware that, given potential limitations, you may only be able to capture spend where purchasers have specifically used such terms as “fair” and “trade”, “fairtrade” or “fairly” and “traded” in their requisitions, and so items where buyers have used catalogue item numbers will not be reflected in the data. These considerations will be acknowledged in the report.

Response

We have now completed the search of our records and can provide you with the following information:

Please find attached Appendix 1 - 2023-24 Fairtrade expenditure, which shows NHS National Services Scotland (NSS) annual spend on Fairtrade goods, broken down by product and supplier, for April 2023 – March 2024 financial year. Please note that all products listed in this appendix are defined as ‘’Fairtrade’’. Under Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Scotland Act, 2002 (FOISA) an organisation does not have to provide the requested information if it does not hold that information. NSS does not hold any information in relation to purchases intended for resale.

With regards to our policy on the procurement of fairly and ethically traded goods and services, all frameworks are procured in line with the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014 utilising the procurement journey and application of the relevant sustainability tools to develop specific and required criteria.

I trust you will find the information of assistance and if you require any further information, please do not hesitate to contact us. ​ If you are unhappy with any aspect of how we have dealt with your request, you can make representations to us asking us to review the handling of your request. ​ If you require any further information, please contact the Associate Director Governance and Board Services (Board Secretary) within 40 working days of the date of this correspondence. ​

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​ If after a review you are still unhappy, you also have the right to apply to the Scottish Information Commissioner, who can be contacted at Kinburn Castle, St Andrews, Fife, KY16 9DS, or via their application form. ​ National Services Scotland (NSS) is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. You can view all FOI responses within our FOI Publications repository.