Disclosure Log
Prices paid for homecare services (FOI/5816)
Message from Nottinghamshire County Council - 02 June 2025
Dear *****
Freedom of Information Request – Ref: FOI/00005816
Thank you for your email of 12 May 2025 where you requested:
We ask you to provide the information described below, including the prices paid to independent and voluntary sector Homecare Providers for the provision of regulated Homecare services delivered to people aged 65 years and over in their own home during the seven-day Reference Period which includes Monday 14 April 2025.
Your attention is drawn to the definitions and interpretation described in sections 2 and 3.
The information requested is:
- The lowest rate per hour paid to any individual Homecare Provider during the Reference Period, expressed in pounds and pence per hour.
- The highest rate per hour paid to any individual Homecare Provider during the Reference Period, expressed in pounds and pence per hour.
- The total hours of Homecare purchased from all Homecare Providers during the Reference Period (i.e. any period of seven consecutive days which includes Monday 14 April 2025).
- The total hours of Homecare purchased from all Homecare Providers during a seven-day period which includes Monday 15 April 2024 (i.e. the figure which provides a like-for-like comparison with item (d), above, for the previous year).
- Your organisation’s total spend on Homecare services purchased from all Homecare Providers during the Reference Period.
- The total number of Homecare Providers that delivered the total hours of Homecare purchased during the Reference Period (as specified in item (d), above).
- The total number of people aged 65 years and over that received Homecare services from Homecare Providers during the Reference Period.
- A brief description of the type of contracts you currently hold with Homecare Providers (i.e. whether they are block contracts, lead provider contracts, framework contracts, spot contracts, etc.).
Questions (a)-(i) refer to Homecare services. Questions (j) and (k) refer to Direct Payments.
- The 2025-26 rate per hour for a Direct Payment, expressed in pounds and pence per hour. If you have more than one Direct Payment rate per hour, please select the rate paid to a recipient to employ a personal assistant (PA). If you have more than one Direct Payment PA rate per hour, please provide all such rates.
- The total number of adults in receipt of a Direct Payment as of: (I) 1 April 2024 and (II) 1 April 2025 (or dates as close to these as possible).
From our preliminary assessment, it is clear that we will not be able to answer your request without further clarification. Under section 1(3) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA), a public authority need not comply with a request unless any further information reasonably required to locate the information is supplied. If a request is too broad or general in nature, then public authorities have a duty to provide advice and assistance to the applicant in order to focus the request.
In order to provide you with the information on the scale that you have requested would require us to manually review 842 packages of supported livings hours to answers questions d and e. We estimate that it will take around 2 minutes to review each package and extract the information that you have requested, this would total around 28 hours.
Section 12 of the Act makes provision for public authorities to refuse requests for information where the cost of dealing with them would exceed the appropriate limit, which for local government is set at £450. This represents the estimated cost of one person spending 18 hours in determining whether the department holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting the information.
We estimate that it will take us in excess of 18 hours to determine appropriate material and locate, retrieve and extract the information in reference to your request. Therefore, your request will not be processed further.
You may wish to refine your request by narrowing its scope by being more specific about what information you particularly wish to obtain, including any dates or period of time relevant to the information required. We are likely to be able to answer all of your other questions within the time limit if we remove the requirement for the supported living packages from questions d and e. If you would like to proceed with your request on this basis please let me know.
Your privacy: we use your personal information such as name and address so that we can comply with our legal obligations to respond to FOI requests. For further details about the use of information about you, please see the information handling privacy notice on our website at https://www.nottinghamshire.gov.uk/media/4323566/informationgovernanceandinformationrightsprivacynotice.pdf.
If you are dissatisfied with the handling of your request, you have the right to ask for an internal review requests should be submitted within 40 working days of the date of receipt of the response to your original request and should be addressed to: Complaints and Information – Team Manager, Nottinghamshire County Council, County Hall, Loughborough Road, West Bridgford, NOTTINGHAM, NG2 7QP or [email protected].
Please remember to quote the reference number above in any future communications.
If you are not content with the outcome of the internal review, you have the right to apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at: Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, WILMSLOW, SK9 5AF or https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/foi-and-eir-complaints/.
Yours sincerely
Colin Sawers (He/Him)
Information Case Officer | Customers, Complaints and Information
Chief Executive"s Department | Nottinghamshire County Council
County Hall | Loughborough Road | West Bridgford | NOTTINGHAM | NG2 7QP
Tel: (0115) 977 3714