FOI_24-328 Medical school reorganisation
Date of response: 07 January 2025
We have now considered your request of 04 December 2024 for the following information:
Question 1: How many Clinical Academics are there currently within the Medical School?
Our response:
38
Question 2: How many of these are at risk of redundancy?
Our response:
<5
On this occasion the exact number of clinical academics at risk of redundancy is exempt under s.40(2) personal information, for further information please see the below exemption text.
Question 3: How many Clinical Academic positions will there be within the Medical School if and after the proposal, as they currently state, have been implemented?
Our response:
Unfortunately, on this occasion it is not possible to disclose this information as this is exempt under s.40(2) personal information, for further information please see the below exemption text.
Question 4: Can we be sent a copy of the university’s reorganisation proposals including confirmation of the university’s current number of employees within the Medical School and the proposed new structure within the Medical School.
Our response:
Please see accompanying document: FOI_24-328 Appendix A. Where information has been removed from the accompanying document we have replaced the text with a black rectangle. The redacted information is exempt from disclosure under s.40(2) personal information, for further information please see the below exemption text.
Question 5: Can we receive confirmation of the number of proposed redundancies within the Medical School and identify the Grades effected.
19.93 full time equivalent posts are affected within the medical school. These posts are drawn from both academic and non-academic roles. Non-academic grades affected range between grade 4 and grade 9, although not all grades are affected.
Academic grades affected range from Lecturer to Professor (including Clinical Academics). Please note that a breakdown of the exact grades against job titles have been exempted under s.40(2) personal information, for further information please see the below exemption text.
On this occasion, it is not possible to provide all the requested information. The Act contains a number of exemptions that allow public authorities to withhold certain information from release. We have applied the following exemption to part of your request.
| Exemption | Reason |
|---|---|
| s.40(2), Personal information | Disclosure of some of the requested information would be contrary to the requirements of the UK General Data Protection Regulation |
When a request is made under Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for information that includes personal data we are required to consider whether disclosing those data would breach the data protection principles contained within Article 5(1) of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In considering a disclosure under FOIA, the University must also take into account that any information released under the Act will be placed in the public domain, through our own disclosure log or by other means.
The university’s reorganisation proposals contain details of our redundancy consultation within the medical school which is currently a live process and is being managed confidentially across the people and culture, financial, planning and governance divisions and in this instance the medical school. A living individual’s employment circumstances: such a being placed at risk of redundancy coupled with financial and employment information such as salaries; hours and job titles is considered personal information. When a disclosure is made under the FOIA it is made to the world at large. Participants of this consultation process would have no expectation that their personal information, specifically the reasons associated with their placement of being at risk of redundancy, job title; hours and salary information would be made public.
We believe that disclosure of some of the requested information, specifically the job titles; hours and grades of individual staff members, broken-down by individual departments who are identified as making decisions surrounding the proposals and / or those staff who have been identified as being at risk of redundancy would identify these individuals and would therefore be contrary to the requirements of Article 5(1)(a) of the GDPR; namely that information must be processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner in relation to the data subject. In all the associated departments of the medical school the numbers of staff who are affected were low and fell below five. We believe disclosure of the exact number of these staff would risk making these people identifiable. We have therefore redacted this information from FOI_24-328 Appendix A.
We further believe that disclosure of some of the requested information, specifically the exact numbers of clinical academics at risk of redundancy in the medical school and the proposed total number of clinical academics posts which are proposed to exist following implementation of these plans, would identify these individuals, and would therefore be contrary to the requirements of Article 5(1)(a) of the GDPR; namely that information must be processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner in relation to the data subject. The exact number of clinical academics at risk of redundancy fell below five and we believe that disclosing these numbers would make these staff or others who are involved in this process identifiable. We have therefore replaced numbers fewer than five with <5.
We have followed the Information Commissioner’s guidance in assessing whether it is fair to disclose this information under FOIA. This involves considering the nature of the information, the expectations of and potential harm (of disclosure) to the data subjects, and how any legitimate public interest in this information is balanced against the rights and freedoms of the data subjects.
We note that none of the requested information is publicly available. The data subjects would not have had a reasonable expectation that this information would be made public, either now or at the time the information was created. Additionally, we have not identified a lawful basis that would allow or require us to disclose this information. We have therefore concluded that disclosure of this information would be in contravention of the GDPR.