The following response was provided by Surrey & Borders Director of Operations Peter Kinsey. Incidentally , this blog has hardly taken 18 hours to create and its 3 months old, has almost 40 blog entries and hundreds of researched links. Mr Kinsey was simply asked to supply statistics he already had as
Surrey & Borders Partnership Trust has just carried out a review of all its work services.
So, Surrey & Borders cuts daily £3 payments to its garden centre workers while its Director of Operations makes false claims about the hours he has worked.
FOI Request
I write following receipt of your most recent email making a formal complaint and requesting information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (“FOIA”). Your request was termed as follows:
“Lastly, would you please provide official statistics for the service users Surrey & Borders NHS Trust currently employs including job title, pay scale and whether temp or full time contract. This is an FOIA request.”
As you know, under FOIA you are entitled to recorded information that the Trust holds but if it takes the Trust longer than 18 hours to essentially locate, extract and provide the information to you, it does not have to respond. You have made a previous request under the Act within the previous 60 days and the Trust is therefore entitled to aggregate the time taken to deal with both of these requests. I have therefore obtained as much information as I can without exceeding the 18 hour limit.
As you know from the previous response, specific details about individual clients cannot be provided to you as this information is personal data (as defined by the Data Protection Act 1998) )and disclosure would contravene the first data protection principle. Further, information relating to clients’ therapeutic work will be confidential between them and the Trust. This specific information is therefore exempt from disclosure under the FOIA.
In view of this, I have endeavoured to respond to your queries in a more general manner and hope that the following information will be of use to you.
The clients who attend within priority enterprises undertake therapeutic activities and training within establishments run by the Trust on a not for profit basis. There is, therefore, no formal contract of employment in place and no formal pay scale. Clients attend the service for a varying number of hours per week and provided with different sums of money.
The service operates on the basis of referrals to the Trust, although there is an assessment period to ensure that the referral is appropriate. The aim of the service is to return people to employment, to provide work experience and voluntary work externally to clients with mental health and learning disabilities. The Trust endeavours to provide realistic work experience and nationally recognised qualifications working in partnership with East Surrey College. The funding for the placements comes from service level agreements with Primary Care Trusts however, Social Services also purchase individual placements.
The Department of Trade and Industry has produced the following guidance on this issue which you may find useful: www.dti.gov.uk/files/file11883.pdf.
As of the 5th June 2006 the following numbers of clients were undertaking therapeutic work at the various priority enterprises:
* Queen’s Park Garden Centre 19
* Old Moat Garden Centre 35
* Arts & Craft Matters 40
* Assembly Matters Redhill 40
* Netherne Printing Services 25
* Assembly Matters Horley 20
I hope that this has been useful to you.
If you are unhappy with the Trust’s response to your request, you have the right to complain to the Trust and should contact me. If you remain dissatisfied, having exhausted the Trust’s internal complaints procedure, you have a right under Section 50 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to seek a determination from the Information Commissioner on whether the Act has been properly applied by the Trust.
Yours sincerely
Peter Kinsey
Director of Operations
Adult Mental Health Services