FOI_24-305 Fitness to practice
Date of response: 03 December 2024
We have now considered your request of 05 November 2024 for the following information:
We are writing to you with a request for information that falls under the Freedom of Information Act. Our request relates to information concerning fitness to practice procedures as part of regulatory and/or professional body requirements. Below is the information we are requesting.
Question 1: What are the courses in your universities that have fitness to practice procedures as part of regulatory and/or professional body requirements? Please list these
Question 2: How many students on each programme named above have been referred for fitness to practice issues over the last three years (i.e. academic years, 20-21, 21-22, 22-23)?
Question 3: What is the percentage of cohort in each of programme, in each academic year, that has been referred to fitness to practice panels?
Question 4: What was the reason for referral of each student? Please specify numbers and percentages from the following list of options:
Question 5: What was the outcome for each student referred? Please specify numbers and percentages from the following list of possible outcomes:
Our response:
We regret that on this occasion it is not possible to provide the requested information. In line with section 17 of the Act, this response acts as a Refusal Notice:
Unfortunately, on this occasion it is not possible to provide any of the requested information in relation to Question 4 and Question 5. We have determined that the cost of finding and assembling some of the requested information will exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ as defined by section 12 of the Act and the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004/3244.
'The ‘appropriate limit’ of £450, which equates to 18 hours’ work, as defined by the Information Commissioner’s Office, can relate to one request in its entirety or to a series of linked requests. If the University cannot locate, retrieve and extract some or all of the requested information within the 18 hours we are not obliged to retrieve any of the requested information.
Information relating to fitness to practice is held within 5 departments; Medicine, Health Sciences, Pharmacy, Social Work and Education. There is no central record of where this information is held and the University do not record information in the way in which it has been requested.
To explain our position, taking the School of Medicine as an example, for the period outlined in your request, we have identified 663 records, which may fall into the scope of your request. The only way of identifying, extracting and recording the exact information you seek would be to interrogate each individual record manually.
We have calculated it would take approximately 5 minutes per record, up to 55 hours in total, to locate and manually interrogate each individual record. Which exceeds the appropriate time-limit as outlined above.
In relation to Question 3 we do not hold data of the percentage in a cohort for each programme and cannot provide this information. The University do not record this information.
To assist you in formulating a request to which we can respond, we do hold data for Question 1 and Question 2 for all departments listed above and could provide this with a revised request. We can also provide some data from the schools of Health Sciences, School of Medicine [2022/23 only], Pharmacy, Social Work and Education for Question 4 and Question 5; however (as referred to above) this would not include any percentages as the University do not record these and to calculate this information would take us over the statutory time limit as outlined above. Please note we have not considered whether any exemptions may apply to such a request.
We should also point out that any revised request you submit will be treated as a new FOI request, and the 20 day statutory time limit will begin again.
If you are not satisfied you have the right of appeal. If you wish to appeal, please set out in writing your reasons for appealing and send to the above address. You must appeal within 40 working days of the date of this letter. In line with section 5.3 of the UK Government’s Freedom of Information Act Code of Practice, we are not obliged to accept internal reviews after this date.
You also have a subsequent right of appeal to the Information Commissioner’s Office. Further information is available on their website: https://ico.org.uk/global/contact-us/, or by telephone on 0303 123 1113.