What is Freedom of Information?

The Freedom of Information Act 2000 provides public access to information held by public authorities. It does this in two ways:

• public authorities are obliged to publish certain information about their activities;
• members of the public are entitled to request information from public authorities

The Freedom of Information Act gives a general right of access to any recorded information that is held by TRFT. Although the requester must be informed about whether the information is held and information must be supplied, there are set exemptions which does protect some information.

The Act does not give people access to their own personal data (information about themselves) such as their health records. If a member of the public wants to see information that the Trust holds about them, they should make a subject access request.

Where to send requests for information?

Subject Access Request

Requests for Personal information should be submitted to rgh-tr.sarsteam@nhs.net. SARS-TEAM (THE ROTHERHAM NHS FOUNDATION TRUST). Or via post to the following address.

The Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust

Moorgate Road
Rotherham
South Yorkshire

S60 2UD

Freedom of Information

You can submit FOI requests for non-personal information to rgh-tr.freedomofinformation@nhs.net FREEDOM-OF-INFORMATION (THE ROTHERHAM NHS FOUNDATION TRUST). Or via post to the following address.

The Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust

Moorgate Road
Rotherham
South Yorkshire

S60 2UD

Before submitting an FOI Request, please check to see if we have already answered your questions in our Archive/Disclosure log.

What to include in requests for information?

• Include your Full Name (Not a Pseudonymised name)
• Include a valid address (email addresses are accepted if requests are sent via email)
• Use a clear subject line
• Use polite and straight forward language
• Be specific, if your request is too general it maybe refused due to exceeding time/cost limitations. If this happens, we will make a suggestion that you should resubmit a narrower more specific request
• Questions using ‘What’ Or ‘How Much’ are more likely to produce useful responses
• Open ended questions ‘Why’ are not as likely to generate useful responses as we cannot create new information or give opinions/Judgements that are not already recorded.
• Details of how you would like to receive the information