Communications with the SW Pay, Terms & Conditions Consortium
Dear Devon Partnership NHS Trust,
Under the FOI act, I wish to receive:
1) Copies of all communications between your trust and the South-West NHS Pay, Terms & Conditions Consortium or its other member trusts since 1 Sep 2011, with email histories intact.
2) Copies of notes/minutes from any meetings or telephone calls with the Consortium or its member trusts since the same date.
Yours faithfully,
Steve Walker
Please find attached our response to your Freedom of Information request.
Sue
Susan Banham
Information Governance Manager
Devon Partnership NHS Trust
Tel: 01392 675678
Please note that I job share and normally work Mondays, Wednesdays and alternate Tuesdays and Thursdays. If your enquiry is urgent please telephone the number above or e mail the Information Governance team. The Information Governance e mail address is [Devon Partnership NHS Trust request email]
Dear Devon Partnership NHS Trust,
Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.
I am writing to request an internal review of Devon Partnership NHS Trust's handling of my FOI request 'Communications with the SW Pay, Terms & Conditions Consortium'.
Public board meetings can be excluded from the request, but the remainder of the information required is most definitely of public interest. Commercially sensitive figures might be omitted, but the substance of the communications should be disclosed. If the Trust is having discussions it would be embarrassed to have made public, then the public should be able to decide whether it should be having those discussions in the first place.
Furthermore, as public entities, the Trusts should not have 'commercial interests' that it wishes to withhold from the public. Details of its costs, expenditures, plans and surpluses are matters of public interest. An NHS Trust is not a profit-making entity (at least yet!) and should be fully publicly accountable.
A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/co...
Yours faithfully,
Steve Walker
Dear Dpt Ig (DEVON PARTNERSHIP NHS TRUST),
As an addendum to my appeal for review of your decision, please note that a search on your website http://www.devonpartnership.nhs.uk/ for 'consortium' does not return a single result. The information is therefore not held on this site.
Moreover, the 'Meeting the Challenge' website does not provide copies of any of the requested communications - I requested copies of communications, not of press releases.
Your presumption of exemption on the grounds that some of the information is available through other means is therefore invalid.
Please provide the requested information by return.
Yours sincerely,
Steve Walker
Thank you for your message. We confirm that an internal review of the decision will be carried out. Confirmation of the outcome of that review will be communicated to you within 20 working days
Sue
Susan Banham
Information Governance Manager
Devon Partnership NHS Trust
Tel: 01392 675678
Please note that I job share and normally work Mondays, Wednesdays and alternate Tuesdays and Thursdays. If your enquiry is urgent please telephone the number above or e mail the Information Governance team. The Information Governance e mail address is [Devon Partnership NHS Trust request email]
An internal review of the decision will take place as per our earlier e mail.
Please note that there are a number of specific references to the consortium on our website and we would specifically refer you to the Board papers for July 2012 by way of example.
Sue
Susan Banham
Information Governance Manager
Devon Partnership NHS Trust
Tel: 01392 675678
Please note that I job share and normally work Mondays, Wednesdays and alternate Tuesdays and Thursdays. If your enquiry is urgent please telephone the number above or e mail the Information Governance team. The Information Governance e mail address is [Devon Partnership NHS Trust request email]
Dear Mr Walker,
I have been conducting the internal review into the response to your Freedom of Information Request (Ref, DPT12/12/-40).
I have concluded that the exemptions claimed by the Trust were valid and appropriate. This includes the exemption under Section 43(2) of the Act (Commercial Interests). I note your opinion that the Trust does not have commercial interests. However the Trust is required to compete for NHS business against a range of providers from the public, commercial and third sectors and in this context the application of Section 43(2) is appropriate.
However, although the exemptions are valid, it is not feasible that all of the information held by the Trust would be subject to one or more of these exemptions. There therefore is information which is disclosable under the Freedom of Information Act. I have instructed the Information Governance office to re-open your Freedom of Information request and I will review the application of any exemptions myself.
In response to your emails of 15th August, information about the pay consortium is contained in the Trust Board papers which are on our web site. However I accept that this is not easy to find and I have therefore enclosed the direct links below:
http://www.devonpartnership.nhs.uk/filea...
http://www.devonpartnership.nhs.uk/filea...
Your sincerely,
Nick Hopkinson
-----------------------------------------------
Nick Hopkinson
Associate Director - IM&T
Devon Partnership NHS Trust
Wonford House Hospital, Exeter EX2 5AF
Tel. 01392 208761
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