Freedom of Information - HWHCT-340

Our ref: HWHCT-340

19 January 2023

FOI request:

I am writing to you under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to request the following information from Herefordshire and Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust Perinatal Mental Health Team. I’m interested in data held between 2020 and the present day. Please can you tell me:

1. The number of patients referred or self-referred to the service and accepted for treatment, broken down by year

2. The number of patients referred or self-referred to the service and rejected, broken down by year.

3. A list of the reasons patients were rejected from the service, by year, broken down by proportion.

4. The number of appointments per year held by phone, online and in person broken down by type.
5. The average waiting time for a patient between referral and first appointment, broken down by year.

Please provide the information in the form of an email If it is not possible to provide the information requested due to the information exceeding the cost of compliance limits identified in Section 12, please let me know as soon as those limits are identified so I can refine my request.

Trust response: 

1. Refer to attached document: HWHCT 340 FOI - Perinatal Referrals_Activity_WaitingTimes - Document is available on request

2. Refer to attached document: HWHCT 340 FOI - Perinatal Referrals_Activity_WaitingTimes - Document is available on request

3. There is inconsistency in the way this data is recorded on to our system, due to this collating the information required cannot therefore be conducted electronically and a manual search of individual patient records would be required. This would exceed the appropriate cost limit under section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. It’s worth noting that even with a manual search the data would not be reliable.

Section 12 – Exemption where cost of compliance exceeds appropriate limit. Section 12 of the Act makes provision for public authorities to refuse requests for information where the cost of dealing with them would exceed the appropriate limit, which for local authorities is set at £450. This represents the estimated cost of one person spending 2.5 working days in determining whether the department holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting the information. We estimate that it will take us in excess of 2.5 working days to determine appropriate material and locate, retrieve and extract the information in reference to your request. Therefore, this part your request will not be processed further at this time. We might be able to answer a refined request if it was within the costs limit. You may wish to consider, for example, further limiting the time frame of your request or the breadth of your request. Please be aware that we cannot guarantee at this stage that a refined request will fall within the FOIA cost limit.

4. Refer to attached document: HWHCT 340 FOI - Perinatal Referrals_Activity_WaitingTimes - Document is available on request

5. Refer to attached document: HWHCT 340 FOI - Perinatal Referrals_Activity_WaitingTimes - Document is available on request

Please be aware that although this information is accurate at the time it is provided, it may not be in the future and should not be relied upon.