Disclosure Log

Apprenticeships (FOI/8963)

Message from Nottinghamshire County Council - 10 November 2026

Dear Requester,
Request FOI/8963
Further to your request received on 28th October 2026, I confirm that the Council has now considered your request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).

Questions)
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I would be grateful if you could provide the following information regarding apprentices employed by your organisation over the last three years in the Public Protection and Environmental Services. This request relates to apprenticeship participation, workload management, wellbeing support, programme outcomes, and the support arrangements in place for apprentices, particularly those undertaking degree-level programmes and the information will be used as part of an academic research project.

Apprentice Numbers
1. How many apprentices have been employed by your organisation in each of the last three years
2. What apprenticeship levels have been undertaken (Level 2, 3, 4, 5, Degree Apprenticeship, etc.)
3. What percentage of apprentices successfully completed their programme each year

Workload Management
4. Does the organisation have a policy, procedure, guidance document outlining how apprentice workloads should be managed If so, please provide a copy.
5. Does the organisation monitor whether apprentices undertake apprenticeship-related study outside contracted working hours If recorded, please provide any available data for the last three years.

Support Beyond the 20 Requirement
6. Beyond the statutory 20 off-the-job training requirement, what additional support, adjustments, provisions are available to apprentices to assist with workload management, wellbeing, work-life balance
7. Are apprentices provided with any additional protected study time If so, please provide:
o The amount of time allocated;
o The number of apprentices receiving this support.
8. Does the organisation provide any of the following to apprentices:
o Flexible working arrangements;
o Reduced workloads during assessment periods;
o Mentoring schemes;
o Mental health wellbeing support;
o Study leave

Stress and Wellbeing
9. Please provide, for each of the last three years, the number of apprentices who have:
o Reported workload concerns;
o Reported work-related stress;
o Referred themselves to wellbeing support services;
o Accessed employee assistance programmes
during each of the last three years
10. How many sickness absence cases among apprentices have been attributed to:
o Stress;
o Anxiety;
o Depression;
o Other mental health-related conditions
during each of the last three years
11. Has the organisation conducted any surveys of apprentices regarding workload, stress levels, work-life balance Please provide anonymised summary findings, response rates, and any reports produced from these surveys.

Work-Life Balance
12. Please provide details of any formal mechanisms through which apprentices can raise concerns regarding workload, stress, wellbeing, work-life balance.

Retention and Outcomes
13. Please provide the number of apprentices who:
o Completed their apprenticeship;
o Withdrew from their apprenticeship;
o Transferred programmes
for each of the last three years.
14. Where recorded, please provide categories of reasons for withdrawal and the number of withdrawals attributable to each category.
15. For each of the last three years, please provide the number of apprenticeship withdrawals where any of the following factors were recorded as contributing reasons:
o Workload;
o Stress;
o Work-life balance difficulties;
o Academic pressures;
o Mental health concerns

Degree Apprenticeships
16. For apprentices undertaking higher degree apprenticeships, are any additional workplace adjustments study support arrangements provided compared with other apprenticeship levels If so, please provide details.


Answers)
Following careful consideration of your request, the Council has concluded that it is unable to comply with the request in its current form as the cost of determining whether the information is held, locating, retrieving and extracting the information would exceed the appropriate limit prescribed by Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Section 12 - Cost of Compliance Exceeds Appropriate Limit
Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 provides that a public authority is not obliged to comply with a request where it estimates that the cost of complying would exceed the "appropriate limit" set out in the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004.

For local authorities, the appropriate limit is £450, calculated at a rate of £25 per hour, equating to 18 hours of officer time.

The Apprenticeships Team currently supports more than 300 live apprentices and maintains records for a further 800 historical apprentices. The information requested is not held within a single searchable reporting system and is instead maintained across multiple spreadsheets, databases, records and systems.

Whilst some high-level apprenticeship information may be available, much of the information requested is not recorded within standard reportable fields and would require extensive manual investigation, review and collation of individual records. Furthermore, the Apprenticeships Team does not line manage apprentices, who remain employees of
their individual service areas and departments across the Council.

The Council estimates that the following work would be required to comply with your request:
ActivityEstimated Time
Identify apprentices within scope across the three-year period and review over 500 individual apprenticeship records16 hours
Retrieve apprenticeship data from manually maintained spreadsheets and associated systems4 hours
Review records relating to completions, withdrawals and programme transfers10 hours
Review information relating to workload management, mentoring arrangements, study support and additional provisions10 hours
Establish whether information is held concerning workload concerns, wellbeing support, stress-related issues and withdrawal reasons, including searches of records and correspondence4 hours
Contact employing departments and managers, obtain absence information and undertake detailed enquiries concerning sickness and wellbeing matters15 hours
Extract, collate, validate and quality assure information prior to disclosure2 hours
Total Estimated Time61 hours

The Council therefore estimates that compliance with your request would require approximately 61 hours of officer time, substantially exceeding the statutory limit of 18 hours prescribed by Section 12 of the Act.

In particular, questions 9, 10, 11, 14 and 15 would require extensive manual investigation across multiple service areas to establish whether relevant information is held. Such information is not centrally recorded by the Apprenticeships Team and, where it exists, may be contained within individual employee records, departmental records, case notes, email correspondence or absence management systems maintained by separate services.

Additionally, due to the scale of the apprenticeship programme, historical information being held across multiple datasets, and recent organisational restructuring, significant manual interrogation and cross-referencing would be required to ensure any information disclosed was accurate, complete and reliable.
Accordingly, the Council is relying upon Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) to refuse this request.

Section 16 - Duty to Provide Advice and Assistance
Under Section 16 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, public authorities have a duty to provide advice and assistance to applicants where it is reasonable to do so.
The Council has considered how your request might be refined so that it may be answered within the appropriate cost limit. You may therefore wish to submit a revised request by:
  1. Limiting the timeframe from three years to a single financial or academic year.
  2. Restricting the request to high-level apprenticeship statistics, such as:
    • Number of apprentices employed;
    • Apprenticeship levels undertaken;
    • Completion rates;
    • Overall programme outcomes.
  3. Removing questions relating to:
    • Individual workload concerns;
    • Wellbeing support accessed by employees;
    • Sickness absence records;
    • Reasons for withdrawal from programmes;
    • Mental health-related data.
  4. Restricting the request to information already held in a reportable format and routinely recorded by the Apprenticeships Team.
  5. Limiting the request to policies, procedures, guidance documents and support arrangements currently in place for apprentices.

Should you wish to submit a refined request along these lines, the Council will be pleased to consider it and determine whether the information can be provided within the statutory cost limit.

In addition, given the academic nature of your research, the Council would be happy to discuss your requirements further to identify what information may be available at a higher level and within the limits of the Act. This may assist in narrowing the scope of the request to information that can reasonably be extracted and disclosed.

We hope you find this information useful.
Unless otherwise stated, any information supplied in response to this request is subject to copyright owned by Nottinghamshire County Council (NCC). The provision of information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 or Environmental Information Regulations 2004 does not automatically grant permission to re-use that information.
If you wish to reproduce, publish, distribute, adapt, or otherwise re-use any of the information provided, you should seek permission from Nottinghamshire County Council (NCC) before doing so. Requests for permission to re-use information should be submitted to the Council in writing for consideration. Where information is owned by a third party, you may also need to obtain permission from the relevant copyright holder before any re-use takes place.
The Council publishes Access to Information requests and responses on its online Disclosure Log. Only requests deemed to be in the public interest will be included and any request included within this log will be de-personalised accordingly.
To view the Council’s Disclosure Log, please visit our website.
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, 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, 4th Floor, No.3 Circle Square, 5 Hawkshaw Street, Manchester, M1 7BL or https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/foi-and-eir-complaints/.

Yours sincerely,

Freedom of Information
Complaints and Information Team
Strategic & Enabling Services                                        
Nottinghamshire County Council
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