Contracts & Procurement

Request

Dear FOI Officer,

I hope this message finds you well. I am submitting a Freedom of Information request in relation to your organisation’s contract register, procurement strategy, and key contact information.

1. Contract Register

Please provide a complete and current extract of your organisation’s contract register or equivalent database. We are not asking you to compile new information or manually populate missing fields – we simply request the register in its existing form, preferably in Excel or CSV format.

Where available, we are particularly interested in the following fields (though this is not a strict requirement):

• Contract Title
• Supplier Name
• Estimated Spend (Total or Annual)
• Contract Duration and Total Period (including extensions)
• Contract Start and Expiry Dates
• Review Date
• Contract Description
• Contract Owner (Name, Job Title, Contact Details if available)
• Contract Notes
• Managing Department
• Award Date
• Participating Organisations
• Procurement Category
• Framework or Tender References
• Central Purchasing Body
• Classification Codes (CPV, Pro-Class, etc.)

Please don’t spend time populating these fields if they aren’t readily available – we welcome receiving the raw register as it exists in your system.

2. Total Number of Active Contracts

Please confirm the total number of contracts currently listed as active.

3. Procurement Strategy (2025/2026)

Please provide your organisation’s Procurement Strategy for 2025/2026.

If this is part of a multi-year strategy (e.g., 2024–2028), please provide the most recent version covering 2025/2026 or indicate when this will be available.

If any parts are redacted, please identify the redacted sections and the reason.

4. Contact Information

If possible, please provide the name, job title, phone number, and email address for the following roles:

• Responsible officer for API access or data sharing (if applicable)
• Individual managing the contract register
• Finance Director
• Head/Director of Procurement or Purchasing
• Head/Director of ICT
• Head of Estates and Facilities
• Relevant Committee Member, Councillor, or Board Member for Procurement/Finance

If direct contact details are restricted due to GDPR, please indicate the best department or method of contact.

5. Additional Notes

If your contract register is available via an online portal, please ensure all records are accessible (as some portals may only show summary data).

If your organisation uses a contract management system or CRM, please confirm whether it allows for data exports.

If you intend to withhold spend figures, please note that we are requesting an overall total or indicative spend only – not a line-by-line financial breakdown.

Format and Delivery

We would appreciate receiving the information in electronic format, ideally as Excel or CSV, within the statutory FOI response period.

Thank you for your time and assistance. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if any clarification is needed.

Outcome

Some information provided.

Response

Thank you for your enquiry of 17th June 2025, in which you asked for the following information about Contracts & Procurement at The National Archives.

Your request has been handled under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act 2000. The FOI Act gives you the right to know whether we hold the information you want and to have it communicated to you, subject to any exemptions which may apply.

I can confirm that The National Archives holds information relevant to your request and we are pleased to be able to provide some of this information to you.

We are unable to provide you with some of the information you have requested because it is covered by the exemption at section 21 of the FOI Act, which exempts information readily available to the applicant by other means. For further information about why this exemption has been applied, please see the explanatory annex at the end of this email.

Our response

In line with the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 and the Procurement Act 2023, The National Archives publishes information about tenders and contract awards in the public domain at https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk and at Find a Tender.
You also asked about contract owners and who is responsible for maintaining our contracts register. This is the responsibility of our Head of Procurement, Project Delivery & Contract Management, Darren Austin:

Darren Austin Head of Procurement, Project Delivery & Contract Management Procurement@nationalarchives.gov.uk The National Archives, Kew, Surrey TW9 4DU
If you are dissatisfied with the handling of your request or the decision which has been reached, you have the right to ask for an internal review. Internal review requests must be submitted within two months of the date of this response and should be addressed to:

Quality Manager Visitor Experience The National Archives Kew Richmond Surrey TW9 4DU complaints@nationalarchives.gov.uk
Please mark your complaint clearly. You have the right to ask the Information Commissioner (ICO) to investigate any aspect of your complaint. However, please note that the ICO is likely to expect internal complaints procedures to have been exhausted before beginning his investigation.

Yours sincerely,
FOI Assessor Freedom of Information Centre