Request
To whom it may concern,
I would like to make a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act.
Please could you provide details of all hotel accommodation used by employees in your organisation in each financial year since 1997. If this will take too long, please just provide information in each financial year between 2007-08 and 2009-10.
Please list the name of the hotel, the number of individuals who stayed there, and the total cost to the public purse for each visit.
Please indicate which hotels are 4 or 5*.
Our response
I refer to your email requesting information in respect of hotel accommodation for NHS East Midlands’ staff.
I can confirm in accordance with S.1 (1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) that we do hold the information that you have requested.
NHS East Midlands has considered your request and the information it holds. I should advise you that the majority of our hotel bookings and associated spend is carried out on our behalf by Expotel, with little booked directly with individual hotels. To go through individual invoices to identify individual bookings for 3 years would be something that we feel would be outside of the Section 12 FOIA cost parameters.
We have therefore estimated that complying with your request would exceed the appropriate costs limit as laid out in section 12 of the FOIA. This limit is currently set at £450. We have estimated in order to locate, retrieve and extract it the information that you have requested would take in excess of 18 hours. At the hourly rate of £25 per person per hour as set by regulation 4 of the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004, this would exceed the costs limit. Therefore, we are unable to disclose information to you in this instance as this would place too high a burden on the resources of NHS East Midlands.
In accordance with our duty under section 16 FOIA to provide advice and assistance, we would like to make you aware that you may resubmit a narrowed down request for information which can be handled within the 18 hours fees limit. Please note however that whilst we would not look to discourage you from narrowing your request, it is possible that further exemptions may be applicable which would potentially prevent disclosure.
There is some publicly available information that we consider appropriate to point you toward to help address parts of your query. We publish and update Director expenses on a quarterly basis and this information can be found on our website at the following link:
http://www.eastmidlands.nhs.uk/about-us/financial-information/
I hope that this information is of use. If you are dissatisfied with the way in which we have dealt with your request you can ask us to review our decision by writing to:-
Mr Moosa Patel
Director of Corporate Affairs
NHS East Midlands
Octavia House
Interchange Business Park
Bostock's Lane
Sandiacre
Nottingham
NG10 5QG
If at the conclusion of any review you remain dissatisfied you may complain to the Information Commissioner who can be contacted at:-
The Office of the Information Commissioner
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
