direct payments
Case reference FOI2023/00924
Published 19 June 2023
Request
☆For the attention of Adult Social Services☆
The term data in the heading above refers to the actual activity/service/goods that a direct payment was/is used for and not just the broader category that it falls within. Of course, the broader category can be included as well. Where direct payments are used for personal assistants (PA), these can be excluded from the dataset.
The primary purpose of this request is to receive a full breakdown of how individual users spend their direct payments. The amount of each payment would be very useful but not essential. The total direct payment amount each person receives is useful though and this can be displayed weekly or monthly or whichever is easiest for you.
So, to re-iterate, please provide all data in relation to how direct payments are specifically being used by users aged 24 - 54 and all other age groups can be excluded. The more comprehensive and detailed this list is, the more useful it will be for this FOI request. For example, data showing DPs being used for a gym membership (including how much it costs) would be far more valuable than data showing DPs being used for "leisure activities" which would be too broad; nonspecific and unhelpful.
If you require dates to extract this data could you extract it from either of the following financial years (preferably both):
• 2018-2019
• 2022-2023
Response
A: This information is not held in a form that would enable it to be located, retrieved and extracted within the Appropriate Time Limit which equates to 18 hours as defined by the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limits and Fees) Regulations 2004. The service area have advised that they don't hold data on type of spend so this information can't be provided.
To ascertain the data requested officers would need to manually review files to check this information. An initial search has shown that 265 files would need to be checked, and it is estimated that it would take 20 minutes to check each file.
This would at a conservative estimate take at least 88 hours to complete. Where the Limit is exceeded Public Authorities are not obliged to supply the information requested by virtue of S12 of the Act. Please take this letter as a refusal notice under S17 of the Act.
I have been advised that the final part of your request requesting practice guidance policies on direct payments could be collated within the time limit, if you wish for this to be provided please let me know and I will action this as a new information request.
Documents
This is Herefordshire Council's response to a freedom of information (FOI) or environmental information regulations (EIR) request.
You can browse our other responses or make a new FOI request.