FOI/25/105

Request

For Between 1st April 2023 to 31st March 2024 please could you confirm the below:

1.       How many agencies are used to supply agency AHP staff ?
21 agencies were used to supply agency Allied Health Professionals

 

2.       Do you have a preferred supplier for each specialism within AHP - Please list them?
Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust operate a Neutral Vend

3.       Of these agencies, how many are off framework – please list them?​​​​​​​
2 are off framework agencies

4.       Over the period mentioned above, how many workers have been booked via an off framework agency?
3 Allied health Professionals

5.       What is your current fill rate for roles released to agencies?
Overall fill is 97% of which Agency fill is 17% of overall fill.

6.       Please outline your spend per agency, broken down by grade and speciality of Occupational Therapist, Physiotherapist, Radiographers & Biomedical Scientist over the period mentioned above.
We are applying the following exemption

Section 40 – Personal Information

Under section 40 (2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, a public authority does not have to provide information where that information is considered personal information under the Data Protection Act 2018. We believe that, because of the low number of patients involved and the potential for them to be identified when combined with other available information, the information you have requested falls into this category, and therefore will not be supplying this as a result. Therefore we have provided an Overall agency spend figure.  

 

Spend on  Allied Health Professional  - 1.5m

7.       Can you please advise which agencies have supplied these staff and how much spend went to each agency that supplied?
Please see below.

8.       Can you please advise your total Bank spend on these staffing areas?
Overall Bank AHP 1.7m

We are applying the following exemption to Question 7. Please see below:

Section 43 – Commercial Interest
Section 43(2) exempts information whose disclosure would, or would be likely to, prejudice the commercial interests of any person (an individual, a company, the public authority itself or any other legal entity). Disclosure of the requested information could prejudice pending or future negotiations the CLCH may be subjected to.

This is a qualified exemption under the FOIA, which means that consideration must also be given to whether in all the circumstances of the case the public interest favouring disclosure is greater than the public interest in maintaining the exemption. The public interest means what is in the best interests of the public not what is of interest to the public.

Factors in favour of discloser:  

• Disclosing information relating to Question  7 would promote accountability and transparency by showing how CLCH receive and spend public money. 

Factors in favour of non-disclosure: 

• Disclosing the Spend would undermine our competitive position in the marketplace. 
• Disclosing the details agencies would compromise the commercial activities of CLCH, as it would compromise its ability to negotiate competitive future deals.
• Disclosure of the agencies and spend details, is likely to lead to reputational and financial damage which would affect future investments and have a knock-on effect to the money raised for the health economy.

Having considered the above, we maintain that the factors in favour of upholding the exemption outweigh the factors in favour of disclosure. Therefore, the balance of the public interest test is greater in maintaining the exemption available under section 43(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. 

​​​​​​​