FOI 2026/1555

I am writing to request information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

For adult audiology services provided and/or commissioned by your organisation, please could you provide the most up-to-date data available for the following items listed below. Where possible, please supply results as monthly totals; if monthly data is not held or would exceed the appropriate cost limit, please provide quarterly or annual totals (whichever is most readily available).

If you could provide the information for:

• The last 36 months available (or the maximum available within the cost limit), and
• At minimum, the most recent completed period and year-to-date (YTD) totals for the current financial year (e.g., 2024/25 YTD, if held).

1. i) Activity volumes:

• Total number of adult audiology assessments completed.
• Total number of hearing aid devices fitted or issued to adult patients.

1. ii) Hearing aid device units by manufacturer / supplier:

• The total number of hearing aid devices fitted or issued, broken down by manufacturer and/or supplier name, where recorded (e.g., Sonova Group, Demant Group, GN Group, WS Audiology, or other suppliers used).

1. 1. If manufacturer-level detail is not held in this form, please provide the closest available breakdown (e.g., by supplier, product group/category, framework lot, SKU grouping, or internal supplier code).

iii) Procurement route / delivery model (if held):

1. – For the same periods, whether hearing aid devices were:

1. 1. Procured via NHS Supply Chain, and/or

1. 1. Procured via other procurement routes/frameworks, and/or

1. 1. Supplied via externally contracted audiology providers (outsourced provision).
      Where available, please provide any counts or proportions associated with these routes.

Data definitions (for clarity and comparability)

1. Please could you confirm the definition used locally for:
   1. “Assessment completed” and
   2. “Hearing aid fitted/issued” (e.g., per device vs per patient; unilateral vs bilateral counted as 1 vs 2)

If any of the requested information is not held, please let me know and state clearly. If fulfilling the full request would exceed the appropriate cost limit, I would be grateful if you could advise which elements can be provided within my limit (my preference is to prioritise i) hearing aid device units, then (ii) manufacturer/supplier breakdown, then (iii) procurement routes.

The information requested is not held by NHS Greater Manchester (NHS GM) in the format requested. Commissioned audiology services include services commissioned from high street audiologists. Data is not received from their providers in a format that would enable this request to be complied with, as information is contained on invoices, rather than in a data submission. As such, there is no existing centralised log of audiology assessment or device volumes. Such information would also not separately identify the age of the patient.

Therefore, this section of your request is exempt by virtue of the following exemption, 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 Greater Manchester (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. It is estimated that 25 invoices are received on average each month per locality, and that it would require 2 minutes to search locate and extract the information per invoice. Using the estimated calculation below 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.

25 invoices received per locality monthly x 12 months x 10 localities x 2 minutes per invoice = 6,000 minutes (100 hours) for each year requested.

Where audiology devices are supplied or fitted by individual NHS providers, NHS GM does not hold information as to the manufacturer or model of device fitted. The procurement route for such devices would also be a matter for the individual provider, rather than NHS GM.