Freedom of Information

The Freedom of Information (FOI) Act 2000 gives a general right of access to recorded information held by public authorities, sets out exemptions from that right and places a number of obligations on those authorities.

The Act aims to make public sector bodies more open and accountable. It also helps the public to better understand how public authorities carry out their duties, why they make the decisions they do and how they spend public money.

The Act gives the public the right to request official information held by public authorities, unless there are good reasons to keep it confidential.

The Freedom of Information Act does not change your rights under Article 8 of the Human Rights Act, the Data Protection Act or the Common Law duty of Confidentiality.

You can read the legislation in full by clicking on the following link Freedom of Information Act.


Freedom of Information and Bridgewater Community Healthcare NHS Trust 

Bridgewater Community Healthcare NHS Trust is committed to being open and transparent with the public. We will endeavour to provide you with the information that you request however there will be some information that we cannot provide because it is exempt from disclosure or some that we may have to charge you for.

Confidentiality

The Freedom of Information Act does not change the right of our service users and staff to protection of their confidentiality in accordance with Article 8 of the Human Rights Act 1998, the Data Protection Act 1998 and at common law. Maintaining the legal right to personal confidentiality continues to be an important commitment on our part.

To help with this, we have appointed someone who is called a Caldicott Guardian, and who has responsibility to ensure the protection of service user confidentiality throughout the Trust, in accordance with your legal rights. The Trust Caldicott Guardian is:

Dorian Williams
Executive Nurse / Director of Integrated Governance
Bridgewater Community Healthcare NHS Trust
Bevan House
17 Beecham Court
Smithy Brook Road
Wigan
WN3 6PR
Tel: 01942 482711

You can find out more about the role of the Caldicott Guardian on the Department of Health website http://www.dh.gov.uk.

Related Policies

Making an FOI request

FOI requests can be made by any member of the public from anywhere in the world. There is a Code of Practice, Section 45, contained within The Act which details the obligations of the Trust with regard to FOI requests.

You may wish to look at our Publication Scheme to see if any of the information we already published is what you require. If you would like to make a request for information that is not contained within the publication scheme you can contact us in one of the following ways:

The Trust Secretary
Freedom of Information requests
Bridgewater Community Healthcare NHS Trust
Bevan House
17 Beecham Court
Smithy Brook Road
Wigan
WN3 6PR
Email: foi@bridgewater.nhs.uk
Tel: 01942 482711

Please remember to include your address and describe in as much detail as you can, the information that you require.

What happens next?

We will send you an acknowledgement of your request by post or e-mail as soon as we can after receipt. You will be given a unique identifier that you should use in any correspondence to us concerning your request.

There may be times when we need to contact you to ask that you clarify your request because it is not clear what information you require.

We will endeavour to provide you with the information that you have requested within 20 working days however there may be times when we need to consider if the information you are asking for is exempt from disclosure. This can, on a very rare occasion, take a little more time, so we will ask you if this is acceptable.

If some or all of the information that you have requested is exempt from disclosure we will let you know why it is not available and quote the appropriate sections in The Act.

Most of the information that we provide is free of charge, however if there is a charge we will notify you of this as soon as possible and you will be issued with a fee note. Details of how to pay the fee will be given to you at the time.

Sometimes the information that you are requesting may exceed the appropriate limit. This means that we may have to tell you that we cannot provide the information unless you pay the fee. You could however think of modifying your request to bring the cost down and we will try and help you to do that.

Accident and Emergency Department Clinical Quality Indicator

Walk in Centres

The Operating Framework for the NHS in England 2011/12 launched a set of clinical quality indicators which would provide a comprehensive and balanced view of the care delivered in Accident and Emergency Departments (A&E), which included Walk in Centres.