Our Ref: 685490R
Dear
MrGoodman
Thank you for your emails of31 March and 3 April 2012(our ref: 685490R) in which you request a review of our response to your FOI request of 2 March 2012(our ref: 685490).
In your FOI request of2 March2012(our ref: 685490), you asked the following:
“I would like to request copies of all correspondence between ministers and clinical commissioning groups since 1st of January 2011.
I have no doubt that the DoH holds a list of names of all CCGs.
If you are going to cite section 12, can you please give me details of how to narrow the request.”
We replied to you on 2 April 2012as follows:
“The Department of Health may hold information relevant to your request.
However, complying with your request would exceed the cost limit as set out in Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act. Section 12(1) states that a public authority can refuse a request if complying with it would exceed the appropriate limit of £600 (which represents 3.5 working days or 24 working hours). This represents the estimated cost of one person spending this time in determining whether the information is held, and locating, retrieving and extracting the information.
Your request as it is currently worded would breach the appropriate cost limit because the information that you have asked for is not specific to any policy area. To fully comply with your request we would need to search all recorded communication from every official in the Department of Health, along with every Minister, in order to capture any appropriate documents.
I am sure you will appreciate that even for the time frame in question, this would involve searching thousands of documents and emails.
Please be assured that we are keen to assist you and if you were to refine your request for information within more specific margins, for example, by requesting correspondence from a specific Minister or ministers’ office, or by specifying a health policy area, then we may be able to continue processing your request. However, I cannot guarantee that Section 12 or any other exemptions will not apply to any information requested.
Details of the Department’s Directorates are available at the following weblink:
On the 31 March 2012,you submitted an internal review request as follows:
“Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews. I am writing to request an internal review of Department of Health's handling of my FOI request 'Correspondence with CCGs'. Again, late in replying.”
On the 3 April 2012 you submitted a further internal review request as follows:
“ I am writing to request an internal review of Department ofHealth's handling of my FOI request 'Correspondence with CCGs'.
I am confused: You state " To fully comply with your request wewould need to search all recorded communication from every officialin the Department of Health, along with every Minister, in order tocapture any appropriate documents.
But why would you need to search all communications from everyofficial when I had SPECIFICALLY asked for correspondence betweenCCGs and ministers? Surely, you have copies of all letters andemails from ministers. You could search those and come up with theresults. It seems as if you are simply determined to mis-read myequest. I was very, very clear.
Try again.”
We are responding to both of your emails in this reply.
Internal review
In response to your concerns that our initial reply was late,your request was emailed to the Department just before midnight on Fri 2 March 2012. Your request was therefore received during non-working hours and was subsequently registered on our systems as being received on the first working day, Monday 5 March 2012. The 20th working day following the date of receipt was Monday 2 April 2012 and this is the day we sent out our response to you. We therefore consider that our response was sent within the 20 day deadline.
However, we acknowledge that had we calculated the day you sent the request as the date of receipt then the 20th working day following that day would have been the 30 March 2012 which is one working day earlier than the day we sent our reply. Our system registered your request as being received on the first working day and this is how we arrived at our calculation of the response deadline. I apologise if this has caused you any inconvenience and we will ensure that this does not happen in future.
In response to your second email, I can confirm that the Department would hold copies of correspondence between Ministers and Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs). Correspondence whether by letter or email, addressed to the Department, or Ministers or DH officials is recorded on a central electronic database called Contact. In addition, any correspondence received directly by any of the five Ministers’ Private Offices would also be registered on Contact. The majority of this correspondence is handled by staff in the DH Ministerial Correspondence and Public Enquiries Unit (MCPEU), whilst some is dealt with by Private Office staff. The DH MCPE Unit has been set up to reply on behalf of Health Ministers to enquiries and correspondence and there is close liaison with Ministers on a daily basis.
A search has been carried out on Contact to ascertain what correspondence the Department has received from CCGs. A search for the phrase, “clinical commissioning groups” and for the acronym CCGs has retrieved a list of 24 records that relate to correspondence from CCGs to the Department from January 2011 to date. Some of these records were duplicate. Of the remaining, nine were items of correspondence from CCGs directly to Ministers and we have provided copies of these with this reply.
In addition, the Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCG) Team within DH would also hold copies of correspondence between Ministers and CCGs, where it exists. Any relevant correspondence they might hold would not necessarily be exactly the same as that held on Contact, so they have undertaken a search on their correspondence files covering the period from January 2011. They have found a further two items of correspondence that fall within scope of your request. One of these items is being provided with this reply whilst the other is being withheld under S35(1)(a) of the FOI Act which exempts from disclosure information relating to the formulation or development of government policy. The letter concerns the development and implementation of clinical commissioning at an emerging CCG.
Section 35 is a qualified exemption, and we are required to assess as objectively as possible whether the balance of public interest favours disclosing or withholding the information.
In general, there is a public interest in the availability of information about the development of clinical commissioning groups.
However, we have also taken into account the fact that this work remains under review, and that there is a strong public interest in preserving the ability of officials to engage in discussion of policy options without apprehension that suggested courses of action may be held up to scrutiny before they have been fully developed or evaluated. This work area is both a live and a sensitive issue, and we consider that the quality of this review work and, potentially, its outcome could be severely prejudiced if the information on which that consideration is based were to be opened up to premature public debate. In this instance, we have determined that the balance of public interest strongly favours withholding the information.
You will notice that a small amount of information has been removed (redacted) from the correspondence supplied. This is in accordance with Section 40 of the FOI Act. Redactions have been made to protect the personal data of officials below Senior Civil Service (SCS) level and that of the individual correspondents, which is exempt from disclosure pursuant to section 40(2) of the Act. This section of the Act provides for the protection of personal information which would not otherwise be available in the public domain.
I do not consider that we were correct to quote a section 12 exemption in our initial response. As explained above, there is a policy team within DH that would hold copies of correspondence between Ministers and CCGswhere it exists. We would not therefore have to search recorded information held by every official in the Department, as quoted in our initial response, but could,and now have, conducted a search of relevant information held by this team.
In addition, we have conducted a relevant search across our correspondence database. You may also be interested to note that should one of our DH Ministers wish to contact all of the CCGs with the same advice, direction or requirement this would be done by way of a letter which would then be made available in the public domain.
These letters would be published on our website at the following address and you may wish to check these pages for updates:
Where information is made available in this way we would quote section 21 of the FOI Act which exempts from disclosure, information which is accessible to the applicant by other means.
The internal review which you requested is now complete. We hope that you are content with this response and the information we have now released.
If you are not content with the outcome of this internal review, you have the right to apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at:
Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Yours sincerely,
Lynwen Paddy,
Senior FOI Manager,
Freedom of Information Team