FOI 2025/1241

1. Please could you provide correspondence between NHSE and the ICB’s CEO and/or Chief Financial Officer regarding the system being placed into the Investigation and Intervention programme. By investigation and intervention, I am referring to the financial recovery regime introduced by NHSE last year. Please include covering emails and any attached letters/written information.
2. Please provide correspondence (including but not limited to emails, formal letters etc), from May, June and July of 2024.

NHS Greater Manchester ICB (hereafter referred to as NHS GM) maintain that the cost of complying with your request would exceed the limit set by the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA), and therefore, on this occasion it is with regret that NHS GM are not able to process this further.

Under the FOIA 2000, this 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.

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 responding to this request would involve colleagues reviewing all communications by letter, meeting papers, minutes, e-mail accounts for the Chief Executive, Deputy Chief Executive, Chief Finance Officer, Deputy Chief Finance Officer and their associated support colleagues.

NHS GM does not have a search engine/functionality to be able to search all documents on our data bases/systems for key words, therefore a manual search would be required to provide the information requested. On this basis, the exemption has been applied, because to search all data bases/systems, would exceed the appropriate limit prescribed in the act. Furthermore, during this period, some colleagues have since retired, and therefore, the respective e-mail accounts will no longer be readily accessible.

Although we cannot answer your request to provide correspondence between NHSE and ICB executive(s), you may find the following published information useful. In keeping with good governance, NHS GM published a formal report for the public Board Meeting on 17 July 2024. Please find below a link to the Board papers available on our website: 20240717-nhs-gm-icb-v3.pdf. You may wish to consider the paper numbered as item 6: NHS GM Enforcement Undertakings including the Single Improvement Plan. For completeness, a signed copy of the document is publicly available by the NHS England via the following link: 20240722-GM-ICB-Undertakings-signed.pdf