FOI 2026/1768

Please may I make the following FOI request for adult and children’s services:

1. Are you partnering with any other private or public sector organisations to deliver your Personal Health Budgets (PHBs)? If so, please provide the names of those organisations and a summary of the services they provide.
2. Who is responsible for the delivery of the PHB targets (e.g. PHB Lead) and what are their contact details and job title (name, email, title)?
3. Who is responsible for the delivery of the Continuing Healthcare for adults and who is responsible for Children’s Continuing Care and what are their contact details (name, email)?
4. Who is the Personalised Care or Personalisation Lead/Personalised Care Operations Lead at the ICB and what are their contact details (name, email)?
5. Who is responsible for improving faster hospital discharges at the ICB, what is their job title and what are their contact details (name, email)?
6. How many people in your ICB have been awarded a Continuing Healthcare/ Children’s Continuing Care budget and how many of these have taken up a PHB?
7. For adult and children’s services, excluding wheelchair budgets, how many PHBs have been awarded in the last 12 months and what is the average PHB budget value?
8. What is the current total of direct payment PHBs at the ICB for adult and children’s services
9. How does the ICB make its direct payments – i.e. into bank accounts, pre-paid card?
10. If not already in use, are you considering digital automated services to assist with the delivery of services and budget management of your PHBs, direct payments, and integrated personal budgets? – E.g. Virtual Wallets?
11. If a digital solution is used, what is it, who is the provider and when is the contract due to renew?
12. What is the total annual cost for this software and what licensing model is used (e.g. percentage of budget, per user, or fixed cost)?
13. Do you use a Direct Payment Support Service (DPSS) to assist direct payment recipients and, if so, please provide details of who this is?
14. Is the DPSS a contracted service and, if so, when does that contract expire?
15. What is the annual cost of the DPSS?

NHS Greater Manchester consists of the following 10 Greater Manchester Localities: Bolton, Bury, Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale, 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.

2. Katherine Sheerin, Chief Commissioning Officer is responsible for delivery of All Age Continuing Care (AACC) PHB targets.

Email contact – gm.icp@nhs.net (please mark for the attention of Katherine Sheerin, Chief Commissioning Officer in the subject field).

Manisha Kumar is responsible for delivery of the wider PHB targets i.e. Section 117

Email contact – gm.icp@nhs.net (please mark for the attention of Katherine Sheerin, Chief Commissioning Officer in the subject field).

3. Please refer to the response to question 2.

4. Personalised Care Lead – Director of Nursing, Individualised Commissioning

Personalised Care operations lead – Associate Directors, Individualised Commissioning.

Email contact – gm.icp@nhs.net (please mark for the attention of the job title of the colleague you wish to contact in the subject field).

NHS GM does hold the names of individual colleagues; however, 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.

5. This not a role specific to NHS GM, therefore it will be necessary for you to direct your requests to the Greater Manchester NHS Trusts for the information you seek.

To assist you, please find below links to their websites with information about how to make a Freedom of Information request.

Bolton NHS Foundation Trust – Freedom of information – Bolton NHS FT (boltonft.nhs.uk)

Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust – Freedom of Information Requests :: Northern Care Alliance

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

Stockport NHS Foundation Trust – Freedom of information – Stockport NHS Foundation Trust

Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust – Freedom of Information Requests :: Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care (tamesideandglossopicft.nhs.uk)

Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust – WWL Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust | FOI Disclosure Log

The Christie NHS Foundation Trust – Freedom of information disclosure logs (christie.nhs.uk)

Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust – Freedom of Information :: Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust

Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust – Freedom of Information | Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS FT (gmmh.nhs.uk)

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.

7. This information is available via the NHS England – Digital website. To assist you please find a link to the website below.

Personal Health Budgets – NHS England Digital

8. The current total number of direct payment PHBs is 465.

9.

10. NHS GM ICB are not currently using digital automated services.

11. N/A – Please refer to question 10.

12. N/A – Please refer to question 10.

13.

14. NHS GM localities do not have a DPSS contracted service.

15. NHS Greater Manchester do not record the data in the format requested, furthermore any data provided may not be accurate because this information is not always documented. 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. 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 your request to consider specifying a specific locality and reducing the time period. However, as explained above the results may be inaccurate, because the information requested is not consistently recorded. Please also 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.