Information Commissioner's Office

University Hospital Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust

22 February 2007, Health (NHS)

The complainant submitted a request to the public authority for the names, job titles, working patterns and various salary details of a number of doctors working on a specific hospital ward. The public authority initially considered all of the requested information to be exempt under section 40. However, during the course of the Commissioner’s investigation the public authority released the doctors’ names, job titles and salary bands. The Commissioner’s decision is that the public authority is correct to continue to rely on section 40 as a basis to refuse to release details of the doctor’s gross salaries, additional payments and average number of hours each doctor worked. With regard to the information about the additional payments and average number of hours worked, the public authority also explained to the Commissioner that to provide this information would exceed the appropriate cost limit and therefore was also refusing to provide this information on the basis of section 12. The Commissioner has investigated this claim and accepts that this information could not be provided within the cost limit. However, the Commissioner has decided that when originally refusing the request, the public authority provided the complainant with an inadequate refusal notice.

FOI 1: Upheld