FOI 2025/1452

Under the Freedom of Information Act, I would like to request the following information regarding NHS Continuing Healthcare (CHC) packages for adults aged 18+ within your local ICB, except for questions 1, 2, 5 and 8 where information is required for both adults aged 18+ and children aged 0-18 years old.

For clarity, CHC refers to the NHS Continuing Healthcare funding pathway. For further information please see: https://www.england.nhs.uk/healthcare/.

Homecare refers to packages of care delivered in the individuals’ own homes (not in care homes or residential facilities).

Please provide data for the following financial years: 2021/22, 2022/23, 2023/24, 2024/25 and 2025/26 (projected) except questions 6 and 7 which require a current snapshot. If any data for 2024/25 is not available, please provide budgeted figures for the year or the latest snapshot data that is available.

For any years predating the existence of the ICB, please provide the data for the former CCG(s) that now makes up the ICB.

Where possible, please kindly include responses on the attached spreadsheet.

1. Please could you supply the name, email address and telephone number of the commissioner with responsibility for packages of CHC funded home care for (a) adults aged 18+ and (b) children aged 0-18 years old.
2. Please provide the number of people in receipt of CHC funded home care packages (all active packages during the year including those which started prior) for (a) adults aged 18+ and (b) children aged 0-18 years old.
3. Please provide the total number of CHC funded home care hours delivered for adults aged 18+.
4. Please provide the ICB’s total gross expenditure on CHC funded packages for adults aged 18+.
5. Please provide the ICB’s total gross expenditure on CHC funded home care packages for (a) adults aged 18+ and (b) children aged 0-18 years old.
6. Please provide the lowest, mean and highest hourly rate for CHC funded home care packages for adults aged 18+ for 2021/22 to 2024/25, as well as a current snapshot.
7. Please provide the lowest, mean and highest weekly fee for CHC funded home care packages for children aged 0-18 for 2021/22 to 2024/25, as well as a current snapshot.
8. Please provide a list of the top 10 providers who received the greatest amount of funding from CHC funded home care packages. Please provide data for the last financial year 2024/25 for both (a) adults aged 18+ and (b) children aged 0-18 years old.
9. For each provider, please provide the number of CHC funded home care packages in 2024/25 (all active packages during the year including those which started prior).
10. For each provider, please provide total expenditure in 2024/25 related to CHC funded home care.

NHS Greater Manchester consists of the following 10 Greater Manchester Localities: Bolton, Bury, Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale (HMR), Manchester, Oldham, Salford, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford, and Wigan (former Clinical Commissioning Groups), who currently all have their own processes/systems for recording their Continuing Healthcare (CHC) activity.

1. Mandy Philbin, Chief Nurse NHS Greater Manchester (NHS GM), Telephone: 0161 742 6023 Email: gm.icp@nhs.net  has overall responsibility for Continuing Health Care/Complex Care Services within Greater Manchester (GM).

Place Based Leads are responsible for the budgets for the packages of care and their information can be found on the website via the following link NHS GM Board | Greater Manchester Integrated Care Partnership

For locality enquiries, Greater Manchester Locality Continuing Health Care Teams contact information is available on the NHS Greater Manchester website via the following link https://gmintegratedcare.org.uk/chc/

2.

NHS Greater Manchester (NHS GM) does hold the information requested however, due to the low numbers involved (where patient data is 5 or less <5) we consider this to be exempt under section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 as the disclosure of this information may lead to the identification of individuals. This exemption is not subject to the public interest test.

NHS Greater Manchester (NHS GM), Manchester locality, does not hold the information requested for children’s CHC; it will be necessary for you to contact Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust for the information you seek.  To assist you, please find below link to their website with information about how to make a Freedom of Information request.

Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust – Freedom of Information – Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (mft.nhs.uk)

3. NHS Greater Manchester (NHS GM) cannot provide this information as it is not held in the format requested.

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

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.

NHS GM consists of the 10 Greater Manchester localities, Bolton, Bury, Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale, Manchester, Oldham, Salford, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford and Wigan (former Clinical Commissioning Groups), and therefore documents are held on various data bases. As such a manual search of records would be required. It is estimated a search of each file would take approximately 15 mins and NHS GM holds hundreds of files across the 10 localities. Therefore, due to the volume and complexity of the data involved, it would require a disproportionate amount of time and resources to locate extract and collate the data, and therefore, on this occasion it is with regret NHS GM are not able to process this section of your request further.

Although we cannot answer your request, we might be able to answer a refined request within the cost limit. Therefore, you may wish to restrict the timeframe of your request and/or consider specifying a smaller geographical area. However, please be aware that we cannot guarantee at this stage that a refined request will fall within the cost limit, but NHS GM would do our upmost to assist you.

4.

6.

Salford locality does not hold the information requested; it will be necessary for you to contact the Provider Trust, the Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust (NCA), commissioned in Greater Manchester for the information you seek.  To assist you, please find below links to their website with information about how to make a Freedom of Information request. Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust – Freedom of Information Requests :: Northern Care Alliance

7.

Salford locality does not hold the information requested; it will be necessary for you to contact the Provider Trust, Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust, commissioned in Greater Manchester for the information you seek.  To assist you, please find below links to their website with information about how to make a Freedom of Information request. Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust – Freedom of Information Requests :: Northern Care Alliance

8a. As described above, each locality within GM organises its care on a separate database, and suppliers are added to each database separately. Suppliers are added under the trading name of the company, which may differ from the legal entity name of the provider. These have been combined where they are identified as being related to the same provider, but there may be instances where the same legal entity has multiple trading names which are not obviously linked and recorded separately in different localities. In these instances, such providers have not had their records combined and therefore may not be included in the “Top 10” extract of providers.

8b. As described above, each locality within GM organises its care on a separate database, and suppliers are added to each database separately. Suppliers are added under the trading name of the company, which may differ from the legal entity name of the provider. These have been combined where they are identified as being related to the same provider, but there may be instances where the same legal entity has multiple trading names which are not obviously linked and recorded separately in different localities. In these instances, such providers have not had their records combined and therefore may not be included in the “Top 10” extract of providers.

NHS Greater Manchester (NHS GM) does hold the information requested however, due to the low numbers involved (where patient data is 5 or less <5) we consider this to be exempt under section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 as the disclosure of this information may lead to the identification of individuals. This exemption is not subject to the public interest test.