Freedom of information quarterly update
Freedom of information (FOI) access request statistics
Time period | Valid FOI requests received | Resolved within 20 working days | Total requests outstanding * | Overall compliance |
Quarter 1 2024/25 (April, May, June) | 1093 | 950 | 87 | 87% |
Quarter 4 2023/24 (January, February and March) | 1170 | 1010 | 78 | 86.3% |
Quarter 3 2023/24 (October, November and December) | 891 | 760 | 95 | 85.3% |
Quarter 2 2023/24 (July, August, September) | 1044 | 811 | 249 | 76.68% |
* Please note that requests outstanding represents a snapshot of the position as at the day of reporting for each month.
Information access request action plan
NHS England is committed to responding quickly and responsibly to all FOI requests.
Responding to requests in a timely manner
- Continually improving how quickly we respond to requests, including contracting support from a Commissioning Support Unit (CSU).
- Increasing formal monitoring and regular reporting to NHS England Executive Team to ensure that the organisation is kept up to date with progress.
Refreshing our self-assessment toolkit
- We are updating our self-assessment toolkit in the first of a series of updates that will help us to assess performance. Please read more about the purpose of the FOI self-assessment toolkit.
Providing information compliance statistics
- We are collecting more information and publishing regularly updated freedom of information compliance statistics (see the table above).
Updating our handling procedures
- We have established an escalation contact list and updated handling plan to enable us to process FOI requests efficiently.
Providing information governance training
- All staff have information governance training as part of our mandatory training provision.
- All permanent FOI team staff have FOI accreditation.
Measuring impact
- We will measure the timeliness of response to new cases and the reduction of backlog cases. Having interim support from a Commissioning Support Unit will enable us to maintain our improved compliance rate and backlog reduction.
Internal review processing
- We are committed to maintaining improvement on monitoring and reporting on internal review cases within deadlines. This will help to streamline the FOI appeals process.