Request

From April 2020 to End of March 2024, or the most up to date period of time of recording, the total number of applications for ill health retirements for the following group of staff:

• Doctors
• Qualified Nurses
• Allied Professional groups
• Others

With each category of staff, we wish to understand the number that were successful and had their application approved, subdivided into Teir Level and the primary medical reason for the ill health retirement, and if possible, into broad categories such as:

• Cardiovascular
• Musculoskeletal
• Malignancy
• Mental Health
• Chronic Pain
• Fibromyalgia/CFS
• Post Covid Syndrome/Long Covid
• Others

If it is not possible to subdivide as above, actual diagnosis of primary condition with numbers for each would be adequate.

The NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) received your request on 5 June 2024 and on 21 June 2024 you clarified that you are solely interested in AW33E applications from active employments.

We have handled your request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) 2000.

Our response

I can confirm that the NHSBSA holds information meeting the description specified in your request. However, I estimate that the cost of complying with your request would exceed the non-central Government limit of £450. The estimate is as follows:

To answer this FOI, we would need to categorise all ill health retirement applications into the job titles and health conditions specified in the request.

Job titles are captured as free text on the referral form, and categorisation into the four staff groups specified would require manual interrogation of each record. A sample of 20 cases took an average of 45 seconds per case to categorise, and there are over 15,000 cases in the time period specified. Therefore, categorising all applications would take 15,000 x 45 seconds = 187.5 hours minimum.

Categorising the health conditions specified would also require manual interrogation of the records, as they are held in sub-categories. Therefore, this step would also take a minimum of 187.5 hours.

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.

Under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act, the NHSBSA is not obliged to comply with your request, and I am writing to advise that we will not be processing your request further.

Advice and assistance

Any categorisation of job titles and medical conditions would require a manual interrogation of our records, as both are free text inputs, and a large variation exists in the data. Unfortunately we are not aware of any ways to refine this request to fall within the 18 hour limit.