Request

I would like to make a request to be provided with correspondence or messages between the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS Business Services Authority in relation to the implementation of the McCloud Judgement for NHS pensioners during 2025.

Response

The NHSBSA does hold the requested information; however, we estimate that the cost of compliance with the request would exceed the appropriate limit under section 12 of the FOIA.

We estimate that the cost of complying with your request would exceed the non-central Government limit of £450. 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, extracting and checking the information.

This is because there are a number of NHSBSA employees across multiple directorates involved in the implementation of the Public Service Pension Remedy (McCloud Judgement) that would hold information in scope of this request. The combined estimated time for those individuals to search their mail inboxes and SharePoint locations to locate, retrieve and extract for the requested information would take over 18 hours.

Due to the size and scope of your current request, it is not possible for the NHSBSA to provide specific advice on how to reframe it to meet the appropriate limit. It may also be the case that exemptions apply to the information requested in any reframed request.

Please see the following link to view the section 12 in full - https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/36/section/12

There is a large amount of information on the NHSBSA’s implementation of the Public Service Pension Remedy that is available on the NHSBSA website:

https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/public-service-pensions-remedy-mccloud

You can also follow our latest news about the Public Service Pension Remedy using the following link:

https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/public-service-pensions-remedy-mccloud/changes-public-service-pensions-news

Please note that your request and our decision will be published on our Freedom of Information disclosure log at:

https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-02680