Menopause Sickness (274A/22)
Request
For each of the calendar years 2017; 2018; 2019; 2020 and 2021:
- How many women (officers and staff) have been referred to occupational health with issues of menopause, endometriosis, PMDD etc or mental health issues to do with gynaecological areas.
- How many women (officers and staff) have been off sick with issues of menopause, endometriosis, PMDD etc or mental health issues to do with gynaecological areas.
- How many women (officers and staff) have left the force due to issues of menopause, endometriosis, PMDD etc or mental health issues to do with gynaecological areas. Can this please also include ill-health retirement with officers/staff that have medically retired due to the conditions noted.
Response
Unfortunately, our data are not organised in such a way as to allow us to provide all of this information within the appropriate (cost) limit of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act (see ‘Reason for Decision’ below).
However, although excess cost removes the force’s obligations under the Freedom of Information Act, as a gesture of goodwill I have supplied information, relative to your request, retrieved before it was realised that the fees limit would be exceeded (see attached file 274A_22_attachment.pdf). I trust this is helpful, but it does not affect our legal right to rely on the fees regulations for the remainder of the request.
REASON FOR DECISION
With regard to question one, we are not able to provide a breakdown of how many women have been referred, as our Occupational Health (OH) system does not capture this. OH management referrals from Line Managers do not always contain menopause etc. in the referral and as a result, this wouldn’t be known until the client is in clinic.
Therefore, in order to abstract the requested information, we would need to conduct a manual trawl of all female police office / staff OH records or notes. Such a search however would be a huge undertaking and exceed the appropriate limit (FOIA, s.12).
This means that the cost of compliance with the whole of your request is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond, i.e. the cost of locating and retrieving the information would exceed the appropriate costs limit under section 12(1) of the FOI Act 2000. For West Midlands Police, the appropriate limit is set at £450, as prescribed by the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004, S.I. 3244.
Further information on section 12 of FOI is available here: