GMC FOI Publication Scheme documents

Our ref: F09/2138/EH

Dear Mr Thackeray

Information Request

Thank you for your e-mail of 9 March 2009 in which you request information
in accordance with the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act 2000
(FOIA).

We will consider your request and you will normally receive the
information you seek within the 20 working day limit set by the FOIA.

The FOIA lists a number of exemptions that may prevent the release of
part, or all, of the information that you have requested. We will make an
assessment of the requested information and if it is subject to an
exemption you will be informed of this, together with details of your
right of appeal.

Your request has been allocated to Elizabeth Hiley. If you have any
queries concerning your request you can contact Ms Hiley on 0161 923 6314
or email [email address]

Yours sincerely

Janet Maclean

Information Access Team Administrator

0161 923 6324

[email address]

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Our ref: IAT/F09/2138/EH

Dear Mr Thackeray

Thank you for your email of 9 March 2009 regarding your request for
transcripts and determinations.

You have asked that we supply the following documents to you in a
"searchable electronic format":

Transcripts of the Professional Conduct Committee
Determinations of the Committee for Professional Performance
Transcripts of Fitness to Practise Panels
Transcripts of GMC Council meetings

We are unable to provide you with these documents in a searchable
electronic format. We do not hold our determinations or transcripts in a
manner that would allow us to provide you with all of these in such a
format.
As you mention in your request, our publication scheme refers to their
provision in hard copy form. This is on the basis of our inability to
provide these in other formats.

We are happy to consider requests for specified transcripts or
determinations or, alternatively, thematic examples and would therefore
invite you to resubmit your request in this fashion.

If you have any queries regarding this request please contact me. If you
have any concerns regarding the handling of your request please contact
Julian Graves, Information Access Manager, at [email address].

Yours sincerely

Elizabeth Hiley
Information Access Officer
Tel no: 0161 923 6314
Email: [email address]

Dear Mr Thackeray

Thank you for your email below requesting an internal review of the
handling of your FOI request. I will consider this matter under our
comments and complaints procedure for information requests. This sets a
target response time of 20 working days from receipt. I will endeavour
to respond to you within this timeframe.

Yours sincerely

Julian Graves
Information Access Manager
General Medical Council
Tel. no: 0161 923 6351
Email: [email address]

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Dear Mr Thackeray

Please accept my apologies for the delay in responding to you on this
one. I am currently formulating a response and I expect to be in a
position to respond to you within the next few days.

Yours sincerely

Julian Graves

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Our ref: F09/2138/EH

Dear Mr Thackeray

Thank you for your request for an internal review below. Please accept
my apologies for the substantial delay in responding to you on this
matter.

In your request, you sought the following:

Transcripts of the Professional Conduct Committee (where held in open
session)
Determinations of the Committee for Professional Performance
Transcripts of Fitness to Practise Panels (where held in open session)
Transcripts of GMC Council meetings (where held in open session)

I will deal with each of these arms of your request in turn.

Transcripts of the Professional Conduct Committee (where held in open
session) - You have placed no timeframe on this element of your request.
Transcripts of the Professional Conduct Committee are not held in a
searchable database. Most transcripts from approximately 2002 onwards
are held within a section of our electronic system where they are
identified by the doctor's surname. This is by no means completely
comprehensive and the most likely place for a transcript to be held is
within the hard copy papers which would have to be retrieved from our
remote storage facility. The transcripts would be held within the other
papers held for that particular doctor. In order to provide the
transcript, firstly, work would have to be undertaken to identify the
doctors involved in Professional Conduct Committee hearings. Having done
this, we would be required to retrieve hard copy papers. These papers
would then have to be searched for the relevant transcripts. Even having
done this the papers would then have to be photocopied which, of course,
wouldn't put them into a searchable format. If you wanted these to be
photocopied or scanned from hard copy transcripts there would be a cost
involved which you would have to meet.

Determinations of the Committee for Professional Performance - You have
placed no timeframe on this element of your request. Again
determinations of the Committee for Professional Performance are not
held in a searchable format. The most likely place for a determination
under this Committee to be held is within the hard copy papers which
would have to be retrieved from our remote storage facility. The
transcripts would be held within the other papers held for that
particular doctor. In order to provide the determination, firstly, work
would have to be undertaken to identify the doctors involved in
Committee for Professional Performance hearings. Having done this, we
would be required to retrieve hard copy papers. These papers would then
have to be searched for the relevant determinations. Even having done
this the papers would then have to be photocopied which, of course,
wouldn't put them into a searchable format. If you wanted these to be
photocopied or scanned from hard copy determinations there would be a
cost involved which you would have to meet.

Transcripts of Fitness to Practise Panels (where held in open session)-
You have placed no timeframe on this element of your request.
Transcripts of Fitness to Practise Panel hearings are not held in a
searchable database. Each transcript is held within a section of our
electronic system where it is identified by the doctor's surname. Should
you, for example, seek all Fitness to Practise Panel hearings for 2005,
our initial action would be to identify all those hearings that took
place in that year. Having done so, we would have to access the relevant
folder to extract the transcript for that hearing. There is no database
where all transcripts are held, let alone one held in a searchable
format. If you wanted these to be photocopied or scanned from hard copy
transcripts there would be a cost involved which you would have to meet.

Transcripts of GMC Council meetings (where held in open session) - You
have placed no timeframe on this element of your request. As you may be
aware from January 2009 transcripts of Council meetings are available
via the GMC website. I have provided the relevant link below:

http://www.gmc-uk.org/about/council/pape...

This link also shows Council meeting agendas and papers dating back to
November 1999. We do hold transcripts of Council meetings dating back a
number of years. However, these include private sessions of Council and
in order to fulfil your request each meeting would need to be reviewed
in order to determine what information is held that relates to your
request. Once this information is extracted it will not be in the
searchable format you have requested. If you wanted these to be
photocopied or scanned from hard copy transcripts there would be a cost
involved which you would have to meet.

The costs associated with complying with your request are rather complex
and I have therefore attempted to simplify these for illustrative
purposes. I have used two different years to illustrate the costs
associated with this request. This is because the processes leading to
Fitness to Practise Panel hearings were introduced in November 2004 at
which point Professional Conduct Committee and the Committee for
Professional Performance hearings were phased out. I have therefore used
the following periods:

January to October 2004 - During this period there were 120 Professional
Conduct Committee hearings resulting in a total of 429 Committee
'sitting' days and therefore 429 individual transcripts. In addition,
there were 58 Committee for Professional Performance hearings, resulting
in 58 individual determinations.

January to December 2007 - During this period there were 256 Fitness to
Practise Panel hearings resulting in a total of 1992 Panel 'sitting'
days and therefore 1992 individual transcripts.

Therefore, just these two periods result in a total of 2479 documents
which would require printing, copying and postage. We are currently
assessing the actual costs involved with this process and will be in a
position to provide these to you in due course.

I repeat again that we are content to consider requests requiring a
search for specific transcripts or any on a specific theme.

I will respond to you with more detail in respect of the charges as soon
as I can.

Yours sincerely

Julian Graves
Information Access Manager
General Medical Council
6th Floor
St James's Buildings
79 Oxford Street
Manchester
M1 6FQ

Tel. no: 0161 923 6351
Email: [email address]

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I will be not be in the office again until Monday 8 June 2009. I will not
have access to emails in the meantime.
Should the matter be urgent, please contact either Elizabeth Hiley on 0161
923 6314 (email: [email address]) or Louise Gormley on 0161 923 6311
([email address]). Alternatively I will deal with your email on my
return.

Many thanks

Julian Graves
Information Access Manager
General Medical Council

Unless otherwise expressly agreed by the sender of this email, this
communication may contain privileged or confidential information which is
exempt from disclosure under UK law. This email and its attachments may
not be used or disclosed except for the purpose for which it has been
sent.

If you are not the addressee or have received this email in error, please
do not read, print, re-transmit, store or act in reliance on it or any
attachments. Instead, please email the sender and then immediately delete
it.

General Medical Council

St James Building, 79 Oxford Street, Manchester, M1 6FQ

Regents Place, 350 Euston Road, London, NW1 3JN

The Tun, 4 Jacksons Entry, Holyrood Road, Edinburgh, EH8 8AE

Regus House, Falcon Drive, Cardiff Bay, CF10 4RU

20 Adelaide Street, Belfast, BT2 8GD

The GMC is a charity registered in England and Wales (1089278) and
Scotland (SC037750)

I will be not be in the office again until Thursday 25 June 2009. I will
not have access to emails in the meantime.
Should the matter be urgent, please contact either Mark Ellen on 0161 923
6347 (email: [email address]), Elizabeth Hiley on 0161 923 6314 (email:
[email address]) or Louise Gormley on 0161 923 6311
([email address]). Alternatively I will deal with your email on my
return.

Many thanks

Julian Graves
Information Access Manager
General Medical Council

Unless otherwise expressly agreed by the sender of this email, this
communication may contain privileged or confidential information which is
exempt from disclosure under UK law. This email and its attachments may
not be used or disclosed except for the purpose for which it has been
sent.

If you are not the addressee or have received this email in error, please
do not read, print, re-transmit, store or act in reliance on it or any
attachments. Instead, please email the sender and then immediately delete
it.

General Medical Council

St James Building, 79 Oxford Street, Manchester, M1 6FQ

Regents Place, 350 Euston Road, London, NW1 3JN

The Tun, 4 Jacksons Entry, Holyrood Road, Edinburgh, EH8 8AE

Regus House, Falcon Drive, Cardiff Bay, CF10 4RU

9th Floor, Bedford House, 16-22 Bedford Street, Belfast, BT2 7FD

The GMC is a charity registered in England and Wales (1089278) and
Scotland (SC037750)

Dear Mr Thackeray

Thank you for your email below.

I can confirm that we will be responding further on this and I expect to
be in a position to do so by 1 July 2009.

Yours sincerely

Julian Graves
Information Access Manager
General Medical Council

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Dear Mr Thackeray

In my email below I advised you that I would respond to you in further detail regarding the charges. I have now had an opportunity to prepare a quotation for you based on our publication scheme charging policy. We are able to provide paper copies of transcripts and determinations under our publication scheme at a cost of 10 pence per page. We charge the same fee to provide this material in an alternative medium. A typical daily transcript is 70 pages long. In the example we provided previously (see below) we suggested that there would be 2,421 daily transcripts and 58 determinations for these periods. On the basis that each of these daily transcripts is indeed 70 pages in length, the cost of producing these for you would be £16,947. The cost of postage and packaging would be additionally charged at cost, based on Royal Mail's second class service. We are able to provide £50 worth of material free of charge under our publication scheme.

Although you did not specify this particular period in your original request, if you do wish to proceed with this request, we would require payment in advance. Alternatively, you may wish to restrict your request to a specific record series and timescale, at which point a revised quotation can be supplied.

As you are aware you do have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner should you remain dissatisfied with my response on this matter.

Yours sincerely

Julian Graves
Information Access Manager
General Medical Council

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