‘Motherwell Campus New Coltege { wana Lanarkshire seen —_—_— Principal & Chief Executive: Martin McGuire 15 November 2016 Mr Russell Ashcroft Class Representative - Year 1 Vehicle Maintenance (Light Vehicle) 63 Cardowan Drive Cumbernauld G68 9PA By Email to: russellashcroft@rocketmail.com Dear Russell Freedom of Information Request Thank you for your email of 4 November 2016, in which you have requested a range of information from the College in relation to the financial arrangements for the provision of goods and equipment to your class. Thank you also for the follow up confirmation to clarify the time periods covered by your request. Having now considered your request in full and having consulted with relevant colleagues in both the Faculty of Engineering and Automotive and the Student Funding team, | can provide the following information to you. In setting out the College response below, | have used the same headings as your original email Class 4 Request - What We Spend and How We would like a copy of all receipts/ invoices in relation to the goods purchased for us by the college using our Bursary. The time frame will be around 29th Aug give or take 1 month. There appears to be some confusion here in relation to how the equipment and goods provided to students is funded and it will be helpful if | provide an explanation of the process toyou. The College operates under a national bursary policy and will assess students for eligibility for bursary funding. If assessed as eligible, the student will receive a bursary maintenance award, plus travel costs if the student lives more than 2 miles from campus. If assessed as eligible, the College is additionally able to use a ring-fenced part of the bursary allocation from the Scottish Funding Council to buy ‘Cost of Course’ items for the student. This means that a student assessed as eligible for bursary funding for a course that requires personal equipment os: A =to be provided will receive the same weekly maintenance amount as a student that does not require personal equipment to be provided. Many College courses (but not all) have an associated ‘Cost of Course’ associated with it, This details any specialist equipment etc that is provided to students. These costs are not funded from the bursary maintenance allowance and no deduction from students’ individual bursary awards are made, Rather, it is an additional sum that is made available, where necessary, to reflect the need for some students to be provided with equipment necessary for their course. In the case of Engineering and Automotive courses, given the number of courses that do require additional equipment, the faculty identifies the ‘cost of course’ for each programme offered and then organises a bulk purchase of items such as personal protective equipment (PPE), toolkits etc across 2 number of courses and campuses. This enables the College to obtain a discounted price and ensures that all students have the some standard of kit (avoiding the need for staff to check suitability of each item of PPE for example). Students are measured up in college and all kit is supplied to them at the start of the course. In some areas of the College where there is a range of potential options for kit, the funds are provided directly to the students who are given a list of the necessary equipment. However, within Engineering and Automotive all kit is purchased directly by the College to ensure that it meets all health and safety standards and legal requirements. For your course, the equipment costs as identified on the ‘Costs of Course’ submission are £335 in total, This is made up of: Item Cost Special Clothing (i.e. PPE) £70.00, Kits (tools etc) £160.00 VLE login * £40.00 Books and Materials £65.00 TOTAL £335.00 * VLE login covers the costs of student access to various Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs), including LJ Create, Vehicle Visuals, ATT and City & Guilds. To date the expenditure on each student totals £163.17, which breaks down as £53.56 on PPE and £109.61 on toolkits. For eligible bursary students, the cost of this kit will be met by the ring-fenced element of bursary funds. Where students do not qualify for bursary funds the expenditure is met from the funds that the College receives as fee income from the Scottish Funding Council, The College only receives what is actually spent and, should expenditure be less than the anticipated costs (for example, if any items are obtained for a reduced price), the College does not retain the balance of the funds. Any such balance is not available for distribution to students and any underspend would mean that the ‘cost of course’ information would be reviewed for the following year and the unspent amount is remitted, after approval by the College Auditor, back to the Scottish Funding Council.The College does have invoices for bulk purchase of equipment that is provided to students, but these are not specific to your course group, nor are the costs for bursary funded students distinguishable on invoices from general teaching expenditure. However, | have enclosed a copy of relevant purchase orders and invoices for the Automotive Section at Cumbernauld campus, which includes your course. In addition, the College does not charge the costs of consumables to students, therefore, we do not hold information in relation to your request to be provided with the costs of all consumables ‘charged to students’ for the last 3 years. You also asked for a list of all suppliers for the equipment and PPE charged to students. Although this is not charged to students in the way you suggest, | can confirm that the PPE for students within the Faculty of Engineering and Automotive was purchased from Corston Sinclair Ltd (www.corstonsinclair.com) and the toolkits for your course were purchased from ‘Machine Mart (www.machinemart.co.uk), Class 5 Request - How We Manage Physical Resources We require current stock levels of all consumables charged to students, including the last 3 years audits if such items are audited. Plus any emails relating to stores and third party external providers and student charged consumables, No consumables are charged to students. These are purchased and managed on a faculty- wide basis. Class 6 Request - How We Procure Goods From External Providers. We would like to see a copy of the receipts/invoices and full contracts between those responsible for supplying our equipment, clothes and extras charged to us the students of year 1 vehicle maintenance class 8 Details of the College’s procurement arrangements are available from our website at: http://www.nclanarkshire.ac.uk/us/media-centre/college-procurement. Due to the broad range of books, kits, PPE and other teaching materials purchased, we do not have contractual arrangements with any one supplier for equipment provided to students, although costs are reviewed on an annual basis to ensure we obtain the most competitive prices. The College also works closely with Advanced Procurement for Universities and Colleges (APUC) to ensure that savings, reduction of risk and legal compliance in procurement activities throughout the College. As indicated above, no equipment, clothes or extras are actually charged to students, however, the enclosed purchase orders and invoices will provide details of the types and unit cost of the items provided.