Information Commissioner's Office

Hertfordshire Partnership NHS Trust

2 June 2008, Health (NHS)

The complainant is acting on behalf of the family of a deceased patient (“Mr A”), and requested a copy of a Root Cause Analysis Report into the circumstances surrounding the deaths of Mr A and another patient (“Ms B”). This request was made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the “Act”) to Hertfordshire Partnership NHS Trust (the “Trust”). The Trust provided an edited version of the Report, stating that some information had been withheld under sections 31, 41, and 44 of the Act. During the course of the investigation the Trust also cited section 40 to withhold some of the information in question. The Trust also informed the Commissioner that it had disclosed the edited version of the Report to the complainant on a discretionary basis, outside of the Act. Therefore the Commissioner has focused his investigation on the parts of the Report not already disclosed by the Trust. After considering the details of the case the Commissioner decided that parts of the withheld information were correctly withheld under sections 40 and 41 of the Act. However, the Commissioner concluded that a small part of the withheld information was not exempt under any of the exemptions cited by the Trust. He also noted that the Trust had not cited an exemption to a small amount of the withheld information. He therefore believes that these sections of the Report should be disclosed. The Commissioner also decided that the Trust did not meet the requirements of sections 17(1), 17(1)(b) and 17(7) of the Act.

FOI 40: Not upheld