Request

Please could you tell me how many employees working at NHS Business Services Authority working at a band 6 or below have received funding to complete a level 7 qualification in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023. If possible, could this please be categorised into Directorates.

Response

I cannot confirm or deny that the NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) hold the requested information, as doing so would exceed the appropriate limit set out in section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and is currently set at £450 for non-central Government public authorities. The limit has been specified in The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 and represents the estimated cost of one person spending 18 hours in determining whether the NHSBSA holds the information, and locating, retrieving and extracting the information.

As the requested information is not centralised, Directorates within NHSBSA have their own training processes which are not managed by NHSBSA’s central Learning and Development Team. I can therefore confirm that compliance with the request would require a manual search of all HR records, both centrally and locally held by each Line Manager, for all 3228 staff at Band 6 and below.

It is reasonably estimated that each file will take approximately 2 minutes to complete the manual search and therefore:

• 3228 x 2 minutes searching centrally held electronic HR records = 107.6 hours • 3228 x 2 minutes searching locally held electronic HR records = 107.6 hours

Consequently, the estimated time for compliance with the request is 215.2 hours and therefore outside of the data collections limits. The NHSBSA is not obliged to comply with your request, and I will not be processing your request further as it currently stands.

Please note that this response will be published on our Freedom of Information disclosure log at:

https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-01258