FOI Request - Review of 101003796583 Inter-Authority Teacher Transfers
Request 101003824664
Review of 101003796583 Inter-Authority Teacher Transfers
Dear Information Governance Manager and Data Protection Officer,
Thank you for your response to my FOI request regarding teacher transfers between local authorities.
I would like to request a formal review of your response on the following grounds:
While your reply states that the council does not retain or record records of previous employers for teachers, this appears inconsistent with operational and statutory requirements. Specifically:
1. Salary placement and continuity of service under SNCT agreements require knowledge of a teacher's prior employment with another local authority in order to:
o Apply correct salary point (including pay protection)
o Honour accrued entitlements such as leave, sick pay, and pensions
2. Payroll, HR, or onboarding systems must, by necessity, process and reference previous service data (e.g. via SPPA pension transfers, payroll entry point, or service continuity). While this data may not be stored in a field explicitly labelled “previous employer,” it must be available for determining pay and entitlements — and should therefore be accessible under FOISA.
3. Other Scottish local authorities have provided this data or confirmed its availability in similar FOI requests — including joiner/leaver movements by month and origin LA — which demonstrates both feasibility and precedent.
I therefore request that the council re-examine this request on the basis that the information:
• Is held by the authority, even if not in a dedicated “previous employer” field
• Is used in decision-making regarding teacher pay
• Is retrievable from systems used to manage staffing and payroll
Response 28-07-2025
Following your request for a review (our ref: 101003824664) of your Freedom of Information (FOI) Request – Inter-Authority Teacher Transfers (our ref: 101003796583), a review meeting was held on 23rd July 2025. In attendance were the Information Governance Manager and Data Protection Officer, HR Business and Resources Team Leader, Senior Solicitor, and Information Co-ordinator.
Your FOI Request (101003796583) from 29th May 2025 was discussed.
In our original response we stated that we do not, as such, record the number of teachers who joined your local authority, having previously been employed by another Scottish local authority. We maintain that this still applies.
In your review request you point out that we must have access to the information requested as the information is used in calculating salary and other employment details for new starts. This is correct, however, information on previous employment is held in the successful appointees’ files only and not recorded by the council centrally. The information comes from the myjobscotland website that is not owned or managed by the council. However, the council does have access to certain data held on that system for the specific purpose of advertising and processing job applications. In this way the council has access to, but does not hold, certain information as it is not downloaded or saved locally. Hence the previous response that – in the sense described – the information is not held. Nevertheless to be helpful we have looked further at the available data.
Closer inspection of teachers who have a different continuous service date and start date – which indicates that they have had previous employment outwith Moray – revealed that there have been at least 193 individuals in the past three years to which this situation applies. We would have to look into each individual file to ascertain whether they had been previously employed by another Scottish local authority or by one outwith Scotland. At an estimated 15 minutes per file, this task would take over 40 hours, which would cost the council in excess of £600 of staff time. In accordance with Section 12 of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (excessive cost), we are therefore unable to comply with this part of the request.
In our response we applied exemption under Section 17 of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 - Information not held. Whilst that was correct we should also have been more specific in our response and used exemption under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 - excessive cost. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.