Our ref: FOI187
2 July 2012 / Southgate House
Pans Lane
Devizes
Wiltshire
SN10 5EQ
Tel: 01380 733879
Fax: 01380 722443
e-mail:
By email to:
Paul Jones
Dear Mr Jones,
As you will be aware, NHS Wiltshire has been in correspondence with the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) regarding our earlier response to your Freedom of Information Act request and subsequent internal review. The ICO has asked that we
re-examine our responses and we have made our submission to the ICO.
As a conclusion from this exercise NHS Wiltshire enclose the minutes of the South West Steering Group meetings on 18 February 2011 and 9 March 2011 and the minutes of the FHS Project Group meeting on 27 June 2011 in response to part (c) of your application ‘…the notes or minutes of all meetings of the South West Project Steering Group…’.
I should like to confirm that, although the Steering Group was expected to meet on three occasions and the minutes gave a ‘date of next meeting’ as 22 March 2011, this meeting did not take place. A series of telephone conversations were undertaken in the period between March 2011 and the FHS Project Group meeting in June 2011.
With regards to part (b) of your application ‘…details of any responses to those proposals or plans sent by the South West PCTs to SBS…’, as detailed in the NHS Wiltshire response dated 19 October 2011, NHS Wiltshire did not hold this information. Although NHS Wiltshire was involved in the discussions, responses to SBS were not within the remit of the organisation and, as your request was specific regarding communication flows between South West PCTs and SBS, no documents were held that met this request.
With regards to part (a) of your application ‘…copies of any proposal documents or business plans submitted by NHS Shared Business Services for the provision of FHS services…’, NHS Wiltshire has been considering two documents held by the organisation:
- ‘Transforming and Modernising Family Health Services in the South West Region – Programme Update 20th June 2011’ Powerpoint presentation;
- ‘Transforming and Modernising Family Health Services in the South West Region -NHS SBS Proposal’.
Both documents contain financial information, redundancy costs and proposal/programme information. NHS Wiltshire applied a section 43 exemption recognising commercial sensitivity and withheld information that would have been likely to cause significant concern among staff members at the time.
NHS Wiltshire has made further submissions to the ICO regarding these documents and we await the Commissioner’s decision.
Should you wish to make any further applications under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, please do not hesitate to contact .
Yours sincerely,
Susannah Long
Governance & Risk Manager
cc. Alun Johnson, Senior Case Officer, Information Commissioner’s Office
Encl.