Cost of Interpretation Services 2019 - 2020 - Find a freedom of information request

Request

Under the Freedom of Information Act legislation, could you please provide me with financial information relating to the following services:

  • Costs of face to face interpreting services
  • Costs of telephone interpreting services
  • Costs of written translation services

I would appreciate it if you could provide us with the above information for the last 2 financial years, the current year and budget for next year?

I would also appreciate if you could please provide me with the following information:

1. The annual cost for each of the services

2. Whether interpreting hourly fee is inclusive of travel or plus costs?

3. How much is the cost per hour?

4. Breakdown of the top 30 most popular languages used over these periods

5. Details of your current provider(s) (company name, date contract was awarded)

6. Spend per language service provider (LSP)

7. When are your current language service contracts with your LSPs due to end?

8. Where do you advertise your face to face interpreting and translation contracts?

9. Name, addresses and contact point(s) for your Procurement Department responsible for awarding Interpreting and Translation contracts.

Decision

1. Each service and provision of support is priced independently. Rates are different depending on timescales of booking, minimum timescales, booking requirements, cancellation schedules, method of delivery, and length of delivery, for example weekends, bank holidays etc.

2019:

Interpreting

Translation

Cost - £40,536.13

Cost - £16,731.71

 

2020:

Interpreting

Translation

Cost - £26,401.31

Cost - £5,096.56

 

2. Travel is on top of the hourly fee

 

3. The cost varies depends on a whole host of factors, see answer 1.

 

4. The thirty most popular languages are as follows:

1

Polish

16

Arabic

2

Romanian

17

French

3

Lithuanian

18

Bengali

4

Bulgarian

19

Pashtu

5

Russian

20

Krio

6

BSL (British Sign Language)

21

Mandarin

7

Latvian (Lettish)

22

Gujarati

8

Slovak-Roma

23

Urdu

9

Kurdish / Kurdish Sorani

24

Italian

10

Portuguese

25

Amharic

11

Hungarian

26

Spanish

12

Vietnamese

27

Tamil

13

Turkish

28

Greek

14

Cantonese

29

Tigrinya

15

Slovak

30

N/A

5. DA Languages Limited, date commenced 1 April 2020, renewal 31 March 2022

 

6. Lincolnshire County Council does not hold this information

 

7. 30 March 2022

 

8. They are published on the contracts register and contracts finder. Had the translation contract been procured using an open tender, Lincolnshire County Council would have also published this on OJEU (Official Journal of the European Union) but as a framework was used, we did not need to do this.

 

9. Procurement Lincolnshire, Procurement.lincolnshire@lincolnshire.gov.uk

Reference number
FOI1887
Date request received
23 September 2020
Date of decision
14 October 2020