FOI/25/188

Request

I would like to know the total amount of trust spending on services by law firms for services related to maternity care or neonatal care in each year from 2021-2023 inclusive [whether calendar year or financial year, depending on how the data is collected], including non-legal services such as investigations and reviews. Please break these figures out by year.

 

Please indicate which law firms have supplied these services and give the total spending on each of the law firms from which the trust has purchased these services. Please break these figures out by year.

Response

Having completed enquiries within CLCH, in respect of Sec1(1)(a) CLCH does hold information relating to your request, however, this information is published online. Therefore, for the purpose of section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA), this part of our response serves as a formal notification of refusal of your request on the basis that exemption Section 21 of the FOIA applies.

Section 21 - Information Reasonably Accessible by Other Means

(1)Information which is reasonably accessible to the applicant otherwise than under section 1 is exempt information.

(2)For the purposes of subsection (1)—

(a)information may be reasonably accessible to the applicant even though it is accessible only on payment, and

(b)information is to be taken to be reasonably accessible to the applicant if it is information which the public authority or any other person is obliged by or under any enactment to communicate (otherwise than by making the information available for inspection) to members of the public on request, whether free of charge or on payment.

Section 21 is an absolute exemption and where information falls within the scope of an absolute exemption, a public authority is not obliged to communicate it to an applicant and is also not obliged to comply with the duty to confirm or deny the existence of the information requested.

Having said that and in an effort to assist, please see the below in relation to your FOI request.

FOI/25/184 :: Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust (clch.nhs.uk)