Released: 20 May 2024
Request:
Initial request received 2 April 2024 (our reference FOI231120)
- Reported incidents of racism/racist abuse (of any type, e.g verbal, physical) by patients against staff at your trust, broken down by month, from the dates 31 January 2014 – 31 January 2024.
- Reported incidents of racism/racist abuse (of any type, e.g verbal, physical) by staff against staff, broken down by month, from the dates 31 January 2014 – 31 January 2024.
If gathering 10 years’ worth of data will take too long, please let me know and I will amend my timescale.
Assistance provided to the applicant under section 16 [duty to assist] on 15 April 2024:
The Trust has a responsibility under section 16 of the Act to provide assistance with FOI requests where possible and reasonable to do so.
We have carefully considered your request, however, in its current format your request is unreasonable for us to process. Whilst we hold some information relevant to your request in our security/Datix and Human Resources records, provision of the specific information you are seeking would require significant research relevant to the Trust’s seven hospital sites over the 10 years requested. Information about the Trust’s hospitals can be found on our website.
It is important to note that University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust has only been in operation since 1 April 2021, following the merger of Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust and Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. The legacy Trusts used different administration and reporting systems and therefore data relevant to periods of time prior to the merger will require separate research and validation.
Due to the time and effort required to compile this historical information, we estimate that we can provide data relevant to question 1 from April 2017 and data relevant to question 2 from January 2016, within the ‘appropriate limit’ as outlined in the Fees Regulations before section 12 [cost limit] provision of the FOIA would be considered applicable.
Please confirm if you are happy to receive data for these revised periods of time, or if you would like to revise your request to only data relevant to University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust from April 2021 when it was formed?
Reply received from applicant on 29 April 2024:
Apologies for my delayed response. The amended time frame you suggested would be absolutely fine.
Assistance provided to the applicant under section 16 [duty to assist] on 30 April 2024:
To confirm, we will provide you with data relevant to your request from the date of the merger and relevant to University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust for the period April 2021 – January 2024. Is this correct? Once we hear back from you we will be happy to begin processing your request.
Reply received from applicant on 01 May 2024:
Yes that is correct!
In line with the section 45 FOI Code of Practice, the revised request was allocated a new reference number (our reference FOI240095) and the statutory deadline reset.
Information disclosed:
1. Please refer to the table below for the number of reported incidents of racism/racist abuse by patients or visitors against staff over the periods requested.
Due to the small number of incidents that occurred during some of the months relevant to your request we have provided our data by year. When disclosing information via the FOIA we have a duty under data protection legislation to ensure that no individuals can be identified and regret any inconvenience this may cause (please see further explanation below).
| Reporting period | Number of incidents |
|---|---|
| 01/04/2021 – 31/03/2022 | 37 |
| 01/04/2022 – 31/03/2023 | 54 |
| 01/04/2023 – 31/01/2024 | 42 |
2. There were a total of ≤5* allegations of racism/racist abuse by staff against staff between 1 April 2021 and 31 March 2024.
* This data has been anonymised in line with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) Anonymisation: Managing Data Protection Risk Code of Practice as it relates to the disclosure of information relevant to a small number of living people.
The disclosure of more specific information is exempt under section 40(2) [personal information] exemption.