Information Governance
Manor Hospital
PRIVATE
Moat Road
Liam Porter
Walsall
West Midlands
Email:
request-1054344-
WS2 9PS
xxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.xxx
Tel: 01922 721172 ext. 5701
Date: 27/12/2023
Email
: xxx.xxx@xxx.xxx
Website
: www.walsallhealthcare.nhs.uk
Dear Liam,
Re: FOI ref: 596.23-24 - Gender Options
I am writing in response to your request which was received on 1st December 2023. This
has been managed in accordance with the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act
2000, and I am pleased to attach our response which can be found overleaf.
Please note that the data supplied is not allowed to be re-used and/or published without
the explicit consent of Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust. Please contact the signatory to
request permission if this is your intention.
This letter confirms the completion of this request. A log of this request and a copy of this
letter will be retained by the Trust.
If you have any queries related to the response provided, please contact my office via
xxx.xxx@xxx.xxx in the first instance. Should you have a complaint about the response or
the handling of your request, please also contact my office to request a review of this. If
having exhausted the Trusts internal process you are still dissatisfied, you are entitled to
approach the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and request an assessment of the
manner in which the Trust has managed your request.
The Information Commissioner may be contacted at: Wycliffe House, Water Lane,
Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF or via
www.ico.org.uk
Kind Regards
Rachel Murphy
Freedom of Information Requests Co-Ordinator
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FOI 596.23-24
Re : Gender Options
Please provide a list of all gender options you list on patient forms.
In accordance with
Section 1(1)(a) of the Act, we confirm that the Trust holds the information of
the description specified in your request.
Please be advised that under Section 12(1) of the Act, the Trust is not obliged to comply with
your request for information, as the time taken to deal with your request would exceed the
appropriate limit.
Section 12(1) – provides that:
12. — (1) Section 1(1) does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for information
if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the
appropriate limit.
Section 12(1) of the Act is a provision which allows a public authority to refuse to comply with a
request for information where the cost of compliance is estimated to exceed a set limit known as
the appropriate limit.
The relevant Regulations which define the appropriate limit for section 12 purposes are The
Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulation 2004 SI
2004 No 3244. These are known as the ‘Fees Regulations’.
Regulation 3 of the ‘Fees Regulations’ states that the appropriate limit for public authorities such
as the Trust is £450.
Regulation 4(3) of the ‘Fees Regulations’ states that a public authority can only take into account
the costs it reasonably expects to incur in carrying out the following permitted activities in
complying with the request:
• determining whether the information is held;
• locating the information, or a document containing it;
• retrieving the information, or a document containing it; and
• extracting the information from a document containing it.
All public authorities should calculate the time spent on the permitted activities at the flat rate of
£25 per person, per hour.
This means that the appropriate limit will be exceeded if it would require more than 18 hours work
for public authorities such as the Trust.
The appropriate team with responsibility for collating the requested information, have advised
that the appropriate limit will be exceeded as there is not a central repository for all patient forms.
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There would be numerous forms held throughout the Trust and each department would hold their
own local paperwork. In order to complete your request, every department would have to be
contacted individually to ascertain what information is on their forms. Therefore, as an estimate
the appropriate limit would be vastly exceeded by two to three times.
The Trust does not have to make a precise calculation of the costs of complying with the request,
instead only an estimate is required. However, it must be a reasonable estimate, which has been
provided above.
In order for the Trust to comply with your request, you are required to reduce the scope of your
application.
As you will deduce from the estimate of time required to comply with your original request, you
will have to reduce the scope of your request considerably. For suggestions this would include:
• reducing the fields of search to bring it within any applicable costs limit, by narrowing the
scope of your request to a particular department or procedure search.
Paragraph 14 of Section 45 of the Code of Practice states that where a public authority is not
obliged to comply with a request because it would exceed the appropriate limit to do so, then it:
“…should consider providing an indication of what, if any, information could be provided within
the cost ceiling. The authority should also consider advising the applicant that by reforming or re-
focussing their request, information may be able to be supplied for a lower, or no, fee.”
The Trust can inform you as the request of what information can be provided within the
appropriate limit. This is important for two reasons:
1. a failure to do so may result in a breach of Section 16 of the Act; and
2. because doing so is more useful than just advising you as the requestor to ‘narrow’ the
request or be more specific in focus. Advising requestors to narrow their requests without
indicating what information we as a Trust can provide within the limit, will often just result
in you as the requester making new requests that still exceed the appropriate limit.
Any refined request you submit will be treated as a new request for the purposes of the Act.
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