I am writing to confirm that I have now completed my search for the information which you requested.

Request

I am requesting your assistance under the Freedom of Information Act and hope that this request is able to be fulfilled reasonably easily. I would like the same query as in FOI Request reference FOI-02364, however I would like this for October 2024 data.

https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-02364

The NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) received your request on 6 January 2025.

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.

In determining that your request has exceeded the cost threshold we have considered previous requests received by you on a similar theme within the previous 60 working days.

The previous request, FOI-02364 which you requested on 4 November 2024, took the full 18 hour limit given that new bespoke code had to be written and tested to extract the analysis required.

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.

Please see the below web link which shows the full exemption:

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/36/section/12

Advice and assistance

It may be more efficient to request these each quarter, as this would likely avoid you reaching your limit in the amount of time it takes us to produce the data. By asking for the data less frequently you are reducing the proportion of your 18 hour limit which is spent supplying updates.

This may be useful if more bespoke code needs to be written and tested when your analysis of our data leads to more questions.

Any further requests for information made by you before 5 February 2025 would be likely to be refused for the same reason as stated above. If you make no further requests until 5 February 2025 then the full 18 hours will be available to you from that date.