CfH briefing to ICO

Dear Information Commissioner’s Office,

Thank you for all your previous FOI responses.

I would like to make a further request under the FOI Act.

For the purposes of the Act, the date of your receipt of this
request will be 14th May 2010.

In the minutes of your meeting with CfH dated 3rd February 2010

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/33...

there is mention of the following:

"NHS CFH to brief ICO on criteria for deciding if a (Summary Care)
record should have been used in care."

• Please could you send me this briefing.

As per Section 4a of Part 1 of the FOI Act
(
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2000/ukp...
) I would like the information in question held at the time when my
request is received (draft or otherwise), except that account may
be taken of any amendment or deletion made between now and the
latest time by which the information is to be communicated to me,
being an amendment or deletion that would have been made regardless
of the receipt of my request.

I would be grateful if you would be kind enough to send me the
requested information promptly and in any event not later than the
twentieth working day following the date of receipt of my request -
that is by then end of the working day of 14th June 2010.

If my request is denied in whole or in part, or specific items
within the responses are withheld from disclosure, then you must
justify all deletions by reference to specific exemptions of the
act, as per Section 17 of the Act
(
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2000/ukp...
). Where you rely on a qualified exemption to withhold disclosure,
you are obliged to consider the public interest in your decision
and the refusal notice must explain not only which exemption
applies and why, but also the public interest arguments addressed
in reaching the decision.

I wish to receive the information by email; I believe such a
request would be reasonable in these circumstances. As per Section
11 of Part 1 of the FOI Act (
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2000/ukp...
) I would be grateful if you would "so far as reasonably
practicable give effect to that preference"; if you determine that
it is not reasonably practicable to comply with this preference
then you are required by law to notify me of the reasons for your
determination.

The “return address” (to which the information that I have
requested be should be sent ) is the email address that this
particular request originates from (i.e. ending in
'@whatdotheyknow.com').

I would be grateful if you would kindly acknowledge receipt of this
request as recommended by the ICO (“It would be good practice to
acknowledge receipt of requests and to refer to the 20 working day
time limit, so that applicants know their request is being dealt
with”).

Thank you once again.

Yours sincerely,

Dr Neil Bhatia

Dear Information Commissioner’s Office,

The DoH have sent me a response when I requested any guidance from
them on this matter.

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/cr...

It is patently clear that no-one has the slightest clue how to
determine whether a SCR "should have been accessed" or "should have
been used in care".

Accordingly SCRs that "have been used in care" cannot be physically
deleted, and nor can SCRs that "should have been accessed" as
no-one can determine whether that was the case or not.

If there is no guidance, then how can anyone make such a judgement?

SCRs can obviously never be deleted - under any circumstances.

If indeed the DoH/CfH have not provided you with any such guidance
(and therefore you do not hold this information) then I would
appreciate it if you could let me know PROMPTLY so that I can
regard this FOI request as answered.

Yours faithfully,

Dr Neil Bhatia