Lease Vehicles

Request

Review of previous Lease Car request.

Our Response

I refer to our earlier FOI response and your subsequent request for an internal review.  I can confirm that I have now had a chance to review the previous response and to give consideration to your comments relating to further information that we might hold.

I have been liaising with the Strategic Health Authority (SHA) Human Resources Team and the third party shared services provider who provide support to us around lease vehicles.

Before I address each of your queries in turn, I would like to highlight the fact that NHS East Midlands no longer offers lease car arrangements for staff given the limited lifespan of the SHA. 

Question 1
What is the total cost of vehicles leased by your SHA for employee transportation? By 'employee' I mean any individual who receives a salary or any benefits from your SHA - i.e. including all executive and non-executive board members, along with general employees, both clinical and managerial etc.  Please include all costs for hiring the vehicle (including any relevant tax), any associated running and repair costs, and how these costs are broken down. Please provide this data for each separate year between the formation of your SHA and the most recent year for which figures are available.

We have already provided you with a copy of our Lease Car Policy Document. 

I would like to point out to you that NHS East Midlands does not itself lease vehicles for employee transportation.  Individual employees are entitled to an amount of money that can be used towards the lease of a car for business and private purposes.  Employees are then subject to an annual charge on a monthly basis through deduction from their salary.

Allocation of a lease car is based on seniority and mileage as follows:

The employer contribution (shown above) will always be the same regardless of the make and model of car the employee chooses.  However, the employee costs may differ as the employee must make up the difference in cost depending on the type of vehicle that they select. 

The total annual cost to NHS East Midlands for 10/11 is £94,229.59.

We are only able to provide you with the most recent figures in terms of your request due to the way in which the previous information is held within our systems.  We have therefore estimated that complying with this request for the same information for previous years would exceed the appropriate costs limit as laid out in section 12 of the FOIA. This limit is currently set at £450. We have estimated in order to determine whether the information is held, then to locate, retrieve and extract it, would take in excess of 18 hours. At the hourly rate of £25 per person per hour as set by regulation 4 of the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004, this would exceed the costs limit.  Therefore, we are unable to disclose information to you in this instance as this would place too high a burden on the resources of NHS East Midlands.

Question 2
What are the 10 most expensive car types/models of vehicle that have been used for employee transportation since your SHA was created? Please list all vehicle types that have been used, where this information is available. Please provide the type of car (i.e. Purgeot, or Nissan etc) along with what model (i.e Citreon C1 etc).

As stated above, NHS East Midlands does not lease vehicles itself for employee transportation.  However, the 10 most expensive vehicles leased by individual members of staff at NHS East Midlands are as follows:

Question 3
What is the total cost of vehicles leaded by your SHA just for executive and non-executive board members?
Please include all costs for hiring the vehicle (including any relevant tax), any associated running and repair costs, and how these costs are broken down. Please provide this data for each separate year between the formation of your SHA and the most recent year for which figures are available. I would be grateful if you could also specify the 10 most expensive car types and model that have been leased since your SHA was created.

The total cost of vehicles leased by members of our Executive Team for 10/11 is £17, 279.

I hope that this information is of use.  If you are dissatisfied with the outcome of this review you may complain to the Information Commissioner who can be contacted at:-

The Office of the Information Commissioner
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF