GIDS Referrals to Endo for PB/Cross Sex Hormone Assessment (25-26136+7 )

Reference: 25-26136

Date response sent: 18/07/2025

Details of enquiry

Reference:

25-26136

25-26137

I am writing to request information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

For each calendar year in which the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) holds data, please provide:

1. The number of patients referred by GIDS to each NHS endocrinology clinic (to which it did refer patients for this purpose) for assessment of puberty blocker suitability.
2. The total number of patients referred by GIDS for assessment of puberty blocker suitability across all endocrinology services.
3. The percentage of GIDS patients who had been referred to an endocrinology clinic for assessment of puberty blocker suitability
4. The number of patients referred by GIDS to each NHS endocrinology clinic (to which it did refer patients for this purpose) for assessment of cross-sex hormone suitability.
5. The total number of patients referred by GIDS for assessment of cross-sex hormone suitability across all endocrinology services.
6. The absolute number and percentage of GIDS patients who had been referred to an endocrinology clinic for assessment of cross-sex hormone suitability.

Response sent

This response covers all 6 questions raised in two of your requests for data on GIDS referrals to NHS Endocrinology Clinics for cross-sex hormones and for puberty blockers suitability assessments respectively, which for the sake of clarity are pasted below:

I am writing to request information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

For each calendar year in which the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) holds data, please provide:

1. The number of patients referred by GIDS to each NHS endocrinology clinic (to which it did refer patients for this purpose) for assessment of puberty blocker suitability.
2. The total number of patients referred by GIDS for assessment of puberty blocker suitability across all endocrinology services.
3. The percentage of GIDS patients who had been referred to an endocrinology clinic for assessment of puberty blocker suitability
4. The number of patients referred by GIDS to each NHS endocrinology clinic (to which it did refer patients for this purpose) for assessment of cross-sex hormone suitability.
5. The total number of patients referred by GIDS for assessment of cross-sex hormone suitability across all endocrinology services.
6. The absolute number and percentage of GIDS patients who had been referred to an endocrinology clinic for assessment of cross-sex hormone suitability.

We have aggregated both requests in line with section 5(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, FOIA, as both requests ask for related information on referrals to Endocrinology Teams.

The Trust does not hold the requested data in a way that it can be extracted within the 18 hours resources provisioned under FOIA.

This is because this data was not routinely recorded in an electronically retrievable format within patient files, and so automated reports could not be run.  To extract this data would require a manual search of the freetext clinical notes section of a patient’s file, and to compose a report on the results.

We have estimated that to manually check, identify and extract, this data, where present, would entail a thorough reading of the clinical notes section of a patient’s electronic record, which at around 15 minutes per file would take circa 250 hours per thousand files, and circa 555 hours to search the 2,218 files of patients whom GIDS referred to NHS Endocrinology teams.  This greatly exceeds the 18 hours of resources (officer time) provisioned under FOIA.

This means that the time required to process the six questions from both requests, at an estimated total of 555 hours falls vastly outside the cost limit provisioned under FOIA, so your questions are refused and exemption from disclosure has been engaged under s12 of FOIA.

The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 has set the appropriate limit as £450 based on a generic charge of £25 per hour to determine whether the Trust holds the information, to locate, and then to extract it). This equates to 18 hours of officer time.

Section 12 of FOIA further states that the authority (ie this Trust) is not obliged to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the costs of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit.

Should you wish to narrow the scope of this request, such as to request the numbers of GIDS patients referred to each NHS Endocrinology team by gender assigned at birth and by year of referral, then the Trust would treat any reformulated request we receive as a fresh FOI request and we may be able to help you.