FOI/2025/26/312

Your request:

 

Please can you provide the following information:

The number of patients diagnosed with otic barotrauma (sometimes referred to as airplane ear, middle ear barotrauma, or barotitis media) within your Trust for each of the past five years as measured.

Also if the Trust holds any relevant data on whether the otic barotrauma was attributed to air travel or other rapid pressure changes, please include this.

 

Our response:

Having completed enquiries within CLCH in respect of Section 1(1)(a), CLCH does hold information relating to your request, however, the obligation of Section 1(1)(b) cannot be met as CLCH does not hold all the information requested in a format that allows it to be retrieved within the time and cost limits of FOI.

 

When responding to a request for information under the terms of the FOIA, a public authority is not obliged to provide information if the authority estimates that the cost of the retrieval of the information requested would be in excess of £450 (equivalent to 18 hours work). The costs criteria relates to a request in its entirety, which means that if we cannot retrieve all of the information requested within the costs limit, we are not obliged to retrieve any of the information requested.

 

Section 12(1) of the FOIA states that a public authority is not obliged 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 following explanation outlines the difficulty CLCH has in answering your request:

 

Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust do hold Diagnosis codes in our Data Warehouse so are unable to supply the information in this request