Charges for non-residential care services
Case reference FOI2023/01460
Published 20 September 2023
Request
How many private individuals have been billed for charges for non-residential care services with the presentation of an initial bill in excess of £5,000 without previous notice that costs were accruing, within the past 5 years.
Response
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.
Officers have run a report on our electronic systems to identify invoices for non-residential care services in excess of £5,000 in the last 5 years. This has identified 94 potential cases. However, this report does not identify whether the invoice was the first invoice or whether the person being invoiced had been made aware of the charges beforehand. To ascertain that information officers would need to read and review the case notes for each of the 94 cases on the initial report to see whether the invoice in excess of £5,000 was the initial invoice and whether the person being invoiced had been notified of the charges beforehand. Once each of the cases has been checked in this manner the total number requested could be calculated.
It is estimated that it would take 11 minutes to check each of the 94 cases in this manner. This, in addition to the time spent running the initial report would, at a conservative estimate, take at least 19.6 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.
If you wish to discuss ways in which your request could be narrowed down in scope to take it under the 18 hour limit, please let us know.
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.