FOI 2026/1640

I request disclosure of the following specific commissioning documents held by NHS Greater Manchester Integrated Care Board relating to cataract services commissioned across Greater Manchester.

This request is limited to final commissioning documents only, not internal emails, drafts, or operational correspondence.

1. Commissioning Instructions Relating to Waiting Times

Please provide:

• Any written commissioning instruction, directive, policy, or guidance issued by NHS Greater Manchester ICB within the last 12 months that sets, mandates, recommends, or refers to a minimum waiting period between cataract assessment and cataract surgery.

If no such instruction exists, please confirm this explicitly.

2. Commissioning Instructions Relating to Funding Reductions or Activity Caps

Please provide:

• Any written commissioning instruction, directive, policy, or guidance issued by the ICB within the last 12 months relating to:
  • reductions in funding for cataract surgery,
  • activity caps,
  • volume restrictions,
  • or changes to commissioned activity levels for cataract procedures.

If no such instruction exists, please confirm this explicitly.

3. Commissioning Criteria and Exemption Criteria

Please provide:

• Any commissioning criteria or exemption criteria issued by the ICB relating to accelerated, urgent, or priority cataract surgery.

If no such criteria exist, please confirm this explicitly.

4. Equality Impact Assessment

Please provide:

• The Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) associated with any commissioning instruction or policy relating to cataract waiting‑time rules, funding reductions, or activity caps.

If no EIA exists, please confirm this explicitly.

5. Authorising Officer / Department

Please provide:

• The name and job title of the ICB officer or department responsible for issuing any commissioning instruction identified in response to items 1–4.

Clarification

I am not requesting:

• internal emails,
• drafts,
• meeting minutes,
• call logs,
• or operational correspondence.

I am requesting only final commissioning documents, if they exist.

Please provide the information electronically.

1. Please see attached.

**PDF documents were sent to the requester with this response.  If you require a copy of the full response, together with the attachments, please contact NHS GM’s FOI team – nhsgm.foi@nhs.net **

2. Through the 2025/26 planning round, NHS England (NHSE) has advised ICBs to recycle elective funding to optimise the number of patients seen and treated, ensuring maximum impact of the funding made available by HM Treasury and the Department of Health and Social Care. This approach has necessitated a realignment of activity priorities across the system, including both NHS and Independent Sector provision.

Therefore, there was a strategic reprofiling of activity to support long-term objectives while maintaining the flexibility to utilise independent sector capacity where clinically appropriate or for specific patient cohorts. The plans shared with providers are commercially sensitive and therefore cannot be shared.

Section 43(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 states:

“Information is exempt information if its disclosure under this Act would, or would be likely to, prejudice the commercial interests of any person (including the public authority holding it)”.

Factors favouring disclosure.

There is an inherent public interest in ensuring that there is openness and transparency in the spending of public money. Transparency is likely to increase confidence in procurement processes and the purchasing decisions made by NHS GM. It also enables the public to understand whether NHS GM is getting value for money from its purchasing decisions.

Factors favouring non-disclosure.

However, we believe disclosure of this information would be likely to prejudice the commercial interests of the providers and the negotiating capabilities of NHS GM, particularly in relation to current ongoing negotiations, future commissioning, negotiation and value-for-money considerations.

Balancing Test.

After considering the arguments outlined above, we have decided to withhold this information.

3. Other than the response to Q1 no additional commissioning or exception criteria have been set.
4. An Ophthalmology specific EQIA has been undertaken by NHS GM. See attached.

**A PDF document was sent to the requester with this response.  If you require a copy of the full response, together with the attachments, please contact NHS GM’s FOI team – nhsgm.foi@nhs.net **

Names of individuals, other than the NHS GM Executive Management Team, have been removed from the documents attached because this information is exempt from disclosure under section 40 (2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 as it constitutes personal data where disclosure would be in breach of the Data Protection Act 2018.

As section 40 (2) is an absolute exemption there is no duty to consider disclosure in the public interest. They are set out in Part II of the Freedom of Information Act 2000

5. In relation to Q1 the names and titles of those individuals is on the correspondence sent. In relation to Q2 the responsible individual is Katherine Sheerin, Chief Commissioning Officer, NHS GM