About us

Freedom of Information

Publication Scheme

We comply with the Information Commissioner Publication model scheme and the information below gives more detail on how to access information through Freedom of Information requests or other options available.

Your guide to the information that the Trust routinely publishes about its work.

  • Who we are and what we do
  • What we spend and how we spend it
  • What are our priorities and how we are doing
  • How we make decisions
  • Our policies and procedures
  • Lists and registers
  • Services we offer

If you are looking for information about the Trust then you can search our website.

How to request information that is not included in the publication scheme

If the information you want is not available on the website then you may ask us for it by making a written request to:

Department for Information Governance, Caldicott and SIRO Support
Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
2 Claremont Place
SHEFFIELD
S10 2TB
sth.foi@nhs.net

Your request for information must be made in writing or can be made by email. Please include a name and address for correspondence. Your request should describe the information that you are seeking, giving us enough detail  in order to allow us to correctly identify and find it.

By law we have to deal with requests and respond to you within 20 working days unless an exemption applies. If an exemption applies then we will explain that in our response to you.We have a duty to help and assist you. Advice on making a request can be obtained from the address above.

Requests for access to environmental information

Some information about the Trust’s work is environmental information which is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act (Section 39) and will be dealt with through the Environmental Regulations 2005

Environmental Information covers information on:

  • The state of the environment: such as air, water, soil, land, flora and fauna and diversity including information on genetically modified organisms
  • Emissions and discharges: such as noise, energy, radiation, waste and other such substances
  • Measures and activities: such as policies, plans and agreements, reports, cost benefit and economic analyses
  • The state of human health and safety: including contamination of the food chain
  • Cultural sites and built structure: as they may be affected by environmental factors.

Fees and charges

The Freedom of Information Act and the associated Fees Regulations state that we cannot charge for providing information unless we are allowed to do so (this is called the statutory basis) or charge for the amount of time taken to locate the information unless it takes more than 18 hours. However we are allowed to charge for disbursements with things such as copying or reformatting.

We do not charge for information accessed via our website. For information that is provided in hard copy then we will advise if a charge is to be made.

Assessing the appropriate limit

The Freedom of Information Act provides for public authorities to either charge for or decline requests for information that would cost over what is referred to as the appropriate limit. With regards to Sheffield Teaching Hospitals (and other public authorities) the appropriate limit is set at £450 (or 18 hours at £25 per hour).

Public authorities are required to estimate whether a request is likely to breach the 'appropriate limit' and where it does, to notify the applicant of the estimated costs and where available, the options to reduce those costs as may be required.

Calculation of fees

The Trust will calculate the fees by estimating the time it will reasonably incur on the following activities:

  • Determining whether the information requested is held
  • Locating the information or documents containing the information
  • Retrieving such information or documents
  • Extracting the information from the document containing it (including editing or redacting information)
  • The standard hourly rate that all authorities must use to calculate the staff costs of answering requests is £25 per hour.

There will be no fee to pay for requests for information that cost less than £450 or 18 working hours to complete.

The Trust is however entitled to make a charge to recover the cost of reproduction of the information and postage, which are referred to as disbursements costs and will do so if those costs exceed £15 in total.

If there is a fee to pay, you will be notified in writing, including the total cost and an explanation of how those costs have been calculated. The 20 day compliance time is suspended and reactivated upon receipt of payment.

The Trust will provide advice and assistance and discuss with the requester how the scope of their request could be narrowed in order to keep the fees as low as possible.

When the Trust has issued a fees notice, the applicant has three months to pay. The authority does not have to answer the request until payment has been received (section 9(2) of the Freedom of Information Act) and will consider the request to have been cancelled if payment is not forthcoming within three months after the fees notice is issued.

Requests costing more than the appropriate limit

If a request would cost more than the appropriate limit to answer, the Trust is not obliged to answer it. However, the Trust will provide advice and assistance, so far as it is reasonable to do so, to the person who made the request to see if the question could be refined, or resubmitted in part, to bring it below the appropriate limit. 

If after providing advice and assistance (as required under section 16) the request would still cost more than the appropriate limit to answer, the Trust will inform the applicant of this no later than the 20-day limit for answering requests. The Trust has a number of options:

  • It can decide not to provide the information
  • It can answer and charge a permitted fee calculated in accordance with the Fees Regulations, or
  • It can answer without charging

Aggregating requests

Where the Trust receives a number of requests from either the same person or different people asking for the same or similar information within a short time of each other, we may consider aggregating these requests to take an overall view of the resources which would have to be committed to answering all of the requests.

When can you aggregate requests?

A public authority like the Trust can only aggregate requests in the following circumstances: 

  • Two or more requests for information have been made to the same public authority
  • They must be either from the same person, or from 'different persons who appear to the public authority to be acting in concert or in pursuance of a campaign'
  • The requests must relate to the same or similar information
  • They must have been received by the public authority within a space of 60 consecutive working days

Environmental information regulations

Environmental information is exempt information under Section 39 of the Freedom of Information Act and is dealt with under the Environmental Information Regulations 2005.

Unlike the Freedom of Information, there is no "appropriate limit" in the Regulations and there is no requirement under regulation 12(4)(b) to answer a request that is "manifestly unreasonable". This would apply to requests which would have an unreasonable resource impact on the Trust.

The Trust cannot make a charge for allowing an applicant:

  • access to any public registers or lists of environmental information; or
  • to examine the information (at a place chosen by the public authority)

For all other situations charging is at the discretion of the public authority.

For further information see the Information Commissioner's Guidance

Re-use of public sector information regulations

The Information on this website is the copyright of the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust unless indicated otherwise. You may re-use the information on this website free of charge in any format. Re-use includes copying, issuing copies to the public, publishing, broadcasting and translation in to other languages. It also covers non-commercial research and study. Re-use is subject to the following conditions

You must:

  • Acknowledge the source and our copyright in cases where you supply the information to others
  • Reproduce the information accurately
  • Not re-use the information in a misleading way
  • Not use the information for the principal purpose of advertising or promoting a particular product or service
  • You may establish links to this website but before doing so you should first contact;

The Communications Director
Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Trust Headquarters
8 Beech Hill Road
SHEFFIELD
S10 2SB

Our Policies & Procedures

Clinical policies and procedures

For this information please contact Patient and Healthcare Governance or call 0114 226 6722

Information Governance

For this information please contact sth.foi@nhs.net or call 0114 226 5151

Corporate Governance

For this information please contact Trust Secretary or call 0114 226 8966

Health & Safety Policies and Procedures

For this information please contact Patient and Healthcare Governance or call 0114 226 6722

Human Resources Policies & Procedures

For this information please contact Human Resources or call 0114 305 2503

Charging Regimes

The Freedom of Information Act and the associated Fees Regulations state that we cannot charge for providing information unless we are allowed to do so (this is called the statutory basis) or charge for the amount of time taken to locate the information unless it takes more than 18 hours. However we are allowed to charge for disbursements which things such as copying or reformatting.

We do not charge for information accessed via our website. For information that is provided in hard copy then we will advise if a charge is to be made.

Lists and registers

Any info we are currently legally required to hold in publically available registers 

For this information please contact sth.foi@nhs.net or call 0114 2265151.

List of main contractors / suppliers Asset Register

For this information please contact sth.foi@nhs.net  or call 0114 2265151

Declarations of Interests Register

https://sheffieldthft.mydeclarations.co.uk/home

Disclosure log

For this information please contact sth.foi@nhs.net  or call 0114 2265151.

Further information

For further information please contact:

Department for Information Governance, Caldicott & SIRO Support
Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
2 Claremont Place
Sheffield
S10 2TB

Tel: 0114 226 5151

Email: sth.foi@nhs.net