NFRS 2022 63 - Bronchial challenge test

You asked for:

1. The number of bronchial challenge tests requested and/or performed at the request of your Fire and Rescue Service during 2019 and 2021 for occupational health or other reasons
2. The providers of bronchial challenge testing to your Fire and Rescue Service (at which locations/sites/departments) for occupational health or other reasons
3. The chemical agent used for the test e.g. mannitol or methacholine (if known)
4. The contact details of the sites/departments performing the tests?

Our Response:

Answer: - This information is not recorded in an easily retrievable format. To locate, retrieve and extract the requested information requires a manual search of all records held, we would have to examine each individual employee record within our occupational health systems to determine which if any had been referred or had request a bronchial challenge test. The system does not have a report function to extract this type of data in bulk. There are 841 staff in post employed by Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service as of March 2022. We must also consider those employees employed during 2019 and 2021 which will fluctuate overtime as people join or leave the organisation.

It is estimated that to search one record would take approximately 3 minutes which would equate to approximately 42 working hours (for 2 years’ worth of records). This takes the request over the cost threshold of 18 working hours and engages Section 12 (1) of the Act.

This letter constitutes a refusal notice under Section 17(5) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 with Section 12(1) of the act being applied

12. – (1) Section 1(1) does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit.

Should you wish for the Force to continue with your request, a more accurate figure will be provided within a fee’s notice. The cost will need to be paid by you, prior to any further investigation. Please advise if you wish to proceed.

Alternatively you are invited to refine your request to bring it within the cost threshold, due to how the data is stored no reasonable adjustment can be suggested to bring the request within the cost threshold. To reduce the years required would not alleviate difficulty in searching for the data as we would still need to search each individual record.

In accordance with the Act, once one part of the request exceeds the cost threshold the entire request exceeds the cost threshold.

This letter constitutes a refusal notice under Section 17 (5) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.