FOI 2025/1219

In September 2024 an Invitation To Tender (ITT) was released by Ecovate Group on behalf of several Integrated Care Boards for competitive procurement for healthcare waste collection and disposal services.

Please can you provide me with all the information about the tender process, the responses and the evaluation and awarding of the contracts?

Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA), your request is exempt by virtue of the following exemption, Section 12(1). Section 12. — (1) Section 12(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.

NHS Greater Manchester ICB (hereafter referred to as NHS GM) does hold information related to the tender process. However, the cost of complying with your request would exceed the limit set by the Freedom of Information Act, and therefore, on this occasion it is with regret we are not able to process your request further.

The Freedom of Information Act allows Public Authorities to decline to answer FOI requests when we estimate it would cost us more than £450 (equivalent to 18 hours, calculated at £25 per hour) to identify, locate, extract, and then provide the information that has been asked for.

I would like to explain that due to the wide-reaching nature of your request, the process by which we would need to follow to find and extract the information is going to be complex and time consuming. Your request covers a vast number of individuals and stakeholders across 24 ICB’s, including approximately 44 evaluators, in additional to other project team members. NHS GM does not have a search engine/functionality to be able to undertake centralised searches for the information requested and we cannot provide information under FOIA which is not ‘held’ by the ICB itself.  As such, a manual search would be required by everyone involved. Should it take each individual over 30 minutes to complete a search, it is estimated it will take more than 18 hours to determine appropriate material and locate, retrieve and extract the information in reference to your request. Therefore, NHS GM is not able to process your request further because it would exceed the appropriate limit prescribed in the act.

Although we cannot answer this request, we might be able to answer a refined request. Consequently, you may wish to consider limiting the volume of information you are requesting, or the extent of the searches we would need to undertake to comply. However, please be aware that we still cannot guarantee at this stage that a refined request will fall within the cost limit.

Please also be advised, that should we receive a revised request, we may consider the following:

(1) Where a large amount of information is located in response to a request which is ‘peppered’ with exempt information, we may not be required to comply with the request under section 14 FOIA because of the burden of compliance. We understand you have made this request to various ICBs and in accordance with the section 45 FOIA Code of Practice we may need to coordinate our responses across multiple stakeholders; or

(2) Given the nature of your current request, even if you limited the scope of the information you were interested, statutory exemptions might apply to information we locate in response to any revised FOI request. In particular, information which is commercially sensitive, or which has been received by the ICB in confidence, or which is personal data would be exempt from disclosure under FOIA.

Should you wish to submit a revised request, NHS GM will review this afresh.