Alston Moor & Health

Dear Information and Case Management team, We are writing to follow up on my message of 28 April 2026, sent under reference FOI-208440-2026, in which we asked the Council to confirm that each of the five distinct subject areas would receive a substantive response, and invited contact before any formal refusal under section 12 if scope needed to be discussed. We have not yet received a reply to that message. As the response date of 22 May is now ten days away, we would be grateful for a brief acknowledgement confirming whether the Council has had the opportunity to consider the points raised. We remain happy to discuss prioritisation or scope if that would assist the Council in responding within the statutory period.

Please accept our apologies for the delay in responding. I can confirm that work continues this week to gather the information you have requested, if there is going to be any delays in providing a response to this then we should be in a better position to advise tomorrow once some additional responses are received from the relevant teams within the council. Many thanks for your continued patience. Kind regards, Alan Shepherd Information Case Management Officer Customer & Digital - Enabler Services Directorate [Westmorland and Furness Council request email] 0300 373 3300

Received an acknowledgement.

NHS England does not hold this information. For purposes of this request searches were carried out in the North East and Yorkshire Region of NHSE. This information may be held by North East and North Cumbria local Integrated Care Board. As such, you may wish to contact the ICB directly. Contact details can be found using the following link; [1]NHS North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board. It may help if we explain that the NHS in England is not one single organisation. It is made up of multiple different organisations of differing sizes, at central, national, regional, and local levels each with its own roles and responsibilities. NHS England is a single regulatory body responsible for overseeing the funding, planning, delivery, transformation, and performance of NHS healthcare in England. It is also responsible for providing unified, national leadership for the NHS. NHS England does not directly deliver clinical services. Any recorded information NHS England may be able to provide in response to an FOI request will generally relate to the functions we perform. For more information on the functions carried out by NHS England and the types of information we hold you can visit our [2]website. For further information on the NHS, its structure and other NHS organisations please refer either to our [3]website or the NHS [4]website.

We are requesting an internal review of NHS England's response to FOI [15], on the grounds that the search carried out does not appear to have covered the full scope of records that may be held. The response states that searches were carried out in the North East and Yorkshire Region. The North Cumbria Success Regime ran from approximately 2015 to 2018, at which time NHS England operated a "North of England" regional structure covering both North East and North West, including Cumbria. Records generated during that period would not necessarily sit in the current North East and Yorkshire regional systems, and we ask that the legacy regional and transitional records be searched. In addition, the North Cumbria Success Regime was a nationally-initiated transformation programme chaired at national director level. Programme Board governance and correspondence at national level would be expected to sit in central NHS England records rather than regional records. We ask that a search of central/national records be carried out. We are not contesting the good faith of the original search; we are asking that it be extended to cover these two further areas before a "not held" conclusion is confirmed.

This is our response to their response Reference: FOI-215087-2026 Dear Information Governance Team, Thank you for your response of 13 May 2026 to my request of 24 April 2026. In respect of Question 1, I confirm I would like Cumberland Council to proceed with the disclosure of any records held that were inherited from Cumbria County Council concerning the 2017–18 closure of the Alston in-patient beds at the Ruth Lancaster James Cottage Hospital, or concerning the Alston Alliance / Eden Integrated Care Community plan. I am content to receive material even where there is some overlap with material that may subsequently be disclosed by Westmorland and Furness Council under FOI-208440-2026 (whose statutory deadline is 22 May 2026). My reasons are briefly: (i) the response from Westmorland and Furness Council has not yet been received, so duplication cannot be assumed; (ii) the disaggregation of former Cumbria County Council records between the two successor authorities is, as I understand it, still in progress, and the two councils may hold different parts of the archive; and (iii) where the same record is held by both bodies, the cross-reference is itself useful as confirmation. I would be grateful if you could confirm the revised statutory deadline for the disclosure on Question 1. I am content with your responses to Questions 2 (Section 21 referral — noted, with thanks for the URL to the 15 December 2020 Health Scrutiny Committee minutes), 3 (information not held), and 4 (no placements made by Cumberland Council at Grisedale Croft since the local government reorganisation, and no records held to the requested level of detail prior to 1 April 2023).

NENC ICB sent a substantive response inside the statutory deadline. Replies to all six questions were issued in the attached PDF "FOI ICB 26 033 Response Letter.pdf". An internal review was subsequently requested.

The internal review came back from Liane Cotterill (Information Governance Manager) on 20 May 2026 — that's 14 working days after your review request of 29 April. So procedurally they've met their own deadline. The substance, though, is essentially a one-line answer to each of your four detailed asks: (a) "The All age Continuing Care Team and Head of Commissioning for Secondary Care conducted searches and advised that they do not hold records of the information held." (b) "Files and folders were reviewed and these teams and colleagues advised that information to respond to this request was not held." (c) "The teams and colleagues advised that this information is not held." (d) They have given you the NHS England FOI email.

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See letter attached for our response to their response

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Replied but admitted there is no pathway or they do not have any records for refering people to Grisedale

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Supplementary question — FOI request re discharges of Alston Moor residents Dear Freedom of Information Team, Thank you for your response to my request concerning discharges of patients with a CA9 3** home postcode from the Freeman Hospital and the Royal Victoria Infirmary. I have one supplementary question arising directly from the data you provided. Your response gave discharge counts for patients with a CA9 3** home address for each financial year from 2020–21 to 2025–26, totalling 340 discharges across the period. You explained that pathway coding could not be linked to those counts. I would be grateful if you could provide, for the same cohort and the same period, one additional figure: The number of patients in each financial year whose recorded discharge destination was a care home, nursing home or other residential care setting, as distinct from a return to a home address or other community setting, without identifying any individual patient. I understand this asks about discharge destination rather than discharge pathway. If your administrative systems record discharge destination separately from pathway coding — for example through a destination code — this question may be answerable from the same dataset you consulted.

Dear Information and Case Management team, I am writing to follow up on my message of 28 April 2026, sent under reference FOI-208440-2026, in which I asked the Council to confirm that each of the five distinct subject areas would receive a substantive response, and invited contact before any formal refusal under section 12 if scope needed to be discussed. I have not yet received a reply to that message. As the response date of 22 May is now ten days away, I would be grateful for a brief acknowledgement confirming whether the Council has had the opportunity to consider the points raised. I remain happy to discuss prioritisation or scope if that would assist the Council in responding within the statutory period. Yours sincerely,