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Grievances Raised by Nurses, Doctors, Midwives Jan 2023 to Apr 2024

Reference: 25-26018

Date response sent: 23/04/2025

Details of enquiry

From 1 Jan 2023 up to and including 15 April 2025, can you please tell me the following:

  1. The number of grievances submitted by midwives, broken down into the nature of the complaint, including but not limited to:

a. Bullying and harassment

b. Work relations

c. Terms and conditions of employment

d. Health and safety

Please break this down by year and month.

  1. For “bullying and harassment” and “work relations” (above) please provide us with the trust’s summary of each grievance submitted by midwives and, where relevant, the outcome. Where necessary, please remove identifying details.
  2. The number of grievances submitted by doctors. Please break this down by year.
  3. The number of grievances submitted by nurses. Please break this down by year.

Response sent

The data you have requested for the period, January 2023 to 15th April 2025 is presented in the answers below, where we have masked low numbers with the symbol ‘≤5’, which indicates where numbers are equal to 5 or less than 5. The Trust follows the NHS England standard, established to not to provide data where the numbers are smaller than 6 as this may lead to identification of individuals.

The Trust has engaged exemption from publication of exact low numbers in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) Section 40(2) and Section 40(3a) (Personal Data) and Section 41(1) Information obtained in confidence from a third party, disclosure of this type of personal data or easily identifiable personal data would thus be unfair, breaching GDPR Principle (a): Lawfulness, fairness and transparency.

As this is an absolute exemption, we do not have to apply the Public Interest Test when engaging this exemption

The Trust recognises a high level of interest from public in how the public purse has been spent on services, and must balance this against any disclosure of small numbers and the years in which particular events occurred, which – whilst not directly identifying individuals, would nevertheless give rise to a disclosure of personal data, as follows:

  • Although the month and year of referral are, alone, not personal data, we have also to consider whether other information that is already available, or may become available, to any member of the public, could be combined with the data requested so as to enable identification of the individual(s) concerned.
  • There is a high chance of recognition/identification of particular individuals/patients by fellow patients, colleagues and/or others from the low numbers.
  • This masking of low numbers is not a just a question of considering the means reasonably likely to be used by general public, but also the means likely to be used by a determined person with a particular reason to want to identify individuals from data in the public domain now or in the future, and/or gained from other sources.
  1. The number of grievances submitted by midwives, broken down into the nature of the complaint, including but not limited to:
    1. Bullying and harassment
    2. Work relations
    3. Terms and conditions of employment
    4. Health and safety

Please break this down by year and month.

Not applicable.  The Trust does not employ midwives

  1. For “bullying and harassment” and “work relations” (above) please provide us with the trust’s summary of each grievance submitted by midwives and, where relevant, the outcome. Where necessary, please remove identifying details.

Not applicable.  The Trust does not employ midwives

  1. The number of grievances submitted by doctors. Please break this down by year.

2023:  ≤5 grievances submitted.

  1. The number of grievances submitted by nurses. Please break this down by year.

2024:  ≤5 grievances submitted.

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