The Freedom of Information Act (FOI) gives you the right to ask any public sector organisation for all the recorded information they have on any subject. Anyone can make a request for information – there are no restrictions on age, nationality or where you live.

If you ask for information about yourself, then your request will be handled under the Data Protection Act. If your request is wholly or partly for environmental information we will treat that part of your request under the Environmental Information Regulations (EIR).

Does the CCG hold the information you are requesting?

We are responsible for commissioning a range of health and social care services. There are other organisations that also have responsibility for commissioning these services.

Is the information already available?

We are not required to provide information that is already reasonably accessible to you from elsewhere. That applies whether the information is on our website or somewhere else in the public domain.

We place great importance on transparency and proactively publish as much information as possible on our website.

How should I word my request?

Comprehensive guidance on submitting effective requests for information is available from the Information Commissioner’s Office.

If the information you are interested in has not already been published on our website, please make an FOI or EIR request to us. It will help us deal with your request speedily if you:

• Clearly explain what you want to find out about; we may need to seek further clarification

• Be as specific as you can; if you want a particular piece of information please say so in your request

• Say whether the information you want relates to a specific timescale
• Ask questions such as 'what' or 'how much' as this is much more likely to result in a useful response.

Please avoid

• Using open-ended questions such as 'why'.  We do not have to answer your question if this would mean creating new information or giving an opinion or judgment that is not already recorded

• Mix your request with complaints or comments.

Valid ways to make your request

Requests under the FOI Act must be made in writing (letter or email). Requests under the EIR can be made verbally. You should include the following in the request:

• your full name and address for correspondence;
• a clear statement of the information you are requesting;
• a contact telephone number so we can phone you to discuss your request;
• the format in which you wish to receive the information.

The format of disclosed information

Most of the information we hold is stored electronically and will be disclosed in Portable Document Format (PDF). If you need information to be supplied in a different format, and it is reasonable to release the information in that way, we will do our best to meet your request.

What you can request

You may request any information held by or on behalf of the CCG and recorded in any form. You are entitled to the information contained in documents, not to the documents themselves. If it is more appropriate and convenient, we may choose to provide a copy of the document rather than extracting the information from it.

Please note that the FOI Act and the Environmental Information Regulations do not require public authorities to create new information or give an opinion or judgment that is not already recorded.

If you are asking for a lot of material, it may be more than we can manage without it significantly impacting on our other work.

Our policy, along with all other government departments, is to release as much information as possible without charging a fee. If, however, it will cost the department more than £450 to deal with an FOI request, which is the equivalent of 18 hours’ work, known as the 'appropriate limit', we can refuse to complete your request.  Under EIR, if we consider the request to be 'manifestly unreasonable', we do not have to respond to it.

Factors we are allowed to take into account in deciding whether a request exceeds the cost limit are:

• checking whether the information is held;
• locating the information or documents containing the information;
• retrieving such information or documents;
• extracting information from documents.

If your request is refused on cost grounds, we will try to advise you where possible how best to make a fresh narrower request that can be met within the cost limit.

For requests that are less than £450, we may still charge the full costs of disbursements (photocopying, printing and postage) where it exceeds £50.  If we intend to do this we will inform you. We do not have to provide the information if you fail to pay within three months. For advice go to the Information Commissioners Office website.

Where to send your request

You can make a FOI or an EIR request by:

• Email - voyccg.foi@nhs.net
• Writing - Freedom of Information Team, NHS Vale of York Clinical Commissioning Group, West Offices, Station Rise, York, Y01 6GA
  
  

Receiving an FOI request

We will acknowledge your request as soon as we can and let you know if your request will be dealt with under the EIR or the Data Protection Act 1998 instead of, or as well as, the FOI Act. Where you are asking for information that we routinely give out (such as leaflets, contact details etc.), we may, in the interests of efficiency, just send you the information and not treat your request as a formal FOI or EIR request.

The law obliges us to answer your request promptly and at most within 20 working days from receiving it. We will let you know if we need to extend the period to give proper consideration to your request.

If it is not clear to us what information you want, we will need to contact you. We will do this by telephone, email or letter depending on the contact details that you supplied when you sent us your request. Our aim is to be helpful and to fulfil your request as completely as we can. The 20 working day deadline will start when it is clear to us what you require.

If your request relates to a person/company other than yourself or where disclosure of the information you are requesting could affect the interests of another person, we may need to consult that third party before responding to your request. We will follow the guidance in section four ('Consultation with third parties') of the Freedom of Information Code of Practice.

We will let you if we do not hold the information you have requested.  If we think it may be held by another public authority, we will normally suggest that you redirect your request to them.

Administration of FOI requests

Please note that the administration of FOI requests is carried out by NHS North Yorkshire CCG on behalf of NHS Vale of York CCG. This means that whilst the information you are provided with is held by the NHS Vale of York CCG, it has been gathered and prepared by NHS North Yorkshire CCG.

NHS Vale of York CCG maintains its statutory obligations and responsibilities under the Freedom of Information Act, and all responses are agreed by the CCG prior to being issued.

In order for NHS North Yorkshire CCG to provide this service they need to keep a record of the name and contact details of people making requests under the Freedom of Information Act. This information will not be shared beyond the Freedom of Information Team at NHS North Yorkshire CCG.

NHS North Yorkshire CCG also ensures its compliance with the Data Protection Act and details of how they do this can be found on their website.

• Privacy Notice
• Data Flow

Your rights under the FOI Act

We do not need to know why you are making the request or what you intend to do with the information. On receipt of a valid request for information we are obliged to (where one or more exemptions apply):

• inform you in writing whether we hold the information requested (known as the ‘duty to confirm or deny’), and if so;
• communicate that information to you
  
  

When our FOI Act obligations do not apply

The FOI Act contains a number of exemptions from these obligations, most of which involve the application of a public interest test.

If your request is refused, our reply will identify which exemption or exemptions we are applying.  

We are not obliged to comply with repeated or vexatious requests. We are also not obliged to comply with requests that exceed the costs limit.

The EIR also contains a number of exceptions to providing information:

Your right to complain

Should you be unhappy with the outcome of an FOI or EIR request, you have the right to complain and we will conduct an internal review in accordance with the FOI Act Section 45 code of practice.

We will give you more details of your right to complain when we respond to your request. If you are dissatisfied with the results of our internal review, you may appeal to the Information Commissioner.

Disclosure Log 

Previous FOI responses are available within the publications section.