FOI_25-192 NICHE Travel expenses
Date of response: 25 July 2025
We have now considered your request of 27 June 2025 for the following information:
Details of UK and international travel expenditure of the core team from NICHE: Norfolk Institute for Coastal and Rural Health Equalities since the inception of the institute, including any booked travel to the end of the NICHE contract.
For each episode of travel, please provide the total figure and a breakdown of the figure in to:
• Destination of travel
• Reason for travel
• Length of travel (days/weeks)
• Number of days A/L and number of days classed as working days
• Number of NICHE team attending
• Cost of flights, fuel, trains (any travel vehicle)
• Cost of accommodation
• Registration costs if applicable
• Cost of sustenance
• Breakdown of any consumables, item and cost
• Whether each trip was funded in full or in part by NICHE funds and if so, who covered the remaining costs
And for each trip, evidence of the justification for each trip ahead of the travel, and any post-trip evaluation, report or assessment.
Our response:
We regret that on this occasion it is not possible to provide the requested information.
Under Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act, we can confirm that the University does hold the information requested, however on this occasion it is not possible for us to provide any of the information relating to UK and international travel for the core NICHE team since 2023, and a breakdown of destinations, reason for travel, length, number of days taken, NICHE members attending, cost, registration costs, sustenance costs. Consumables and whether funded in part or full by NICHE.
We have determined that the cost of finding and assembling the requested information will exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ as defined by section 12 of the Act and the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004/3244.
'The ‘appropriate limit’ of £450, which equates to 18 hours’ work, as defined by the Information Commissioner’s Office, can relate to one request in its entirety or to a series of linked requests. If the University cannot locate, retrieve and extract some or all of the requested information within the 18 hours we are not obliged to retrieve any of the requested information.
Information relating to the expenses claimed by NICHE for travel is held within our within personal files of NICHE members, calendar entries, and within our Faculty Professional Services for Health Sciences.
Information relating to the reasons for travel, number of days, consumables and justification of trips may be held within individuals’ calendars or other documentation not recorded within the expenses claim itself. There is no central record of where this information is held.
For the period outlined in your request we have identified 272 data entries which may fall into the scope of your request. The only way of identifying, extracting and recording the exact information you seek would be to interrogate each individual data entry manually.
We have calculated it would take six minutes per records, or 27 hours, to locate and manually interrogate each individual record and associated documentation. Which exceeds the appropriate time-limit as outlined above.
Under section 16 of the Act, and to assist you in formulating a request to which we can respond, we would be able to provide to you the expenditure records held centrally within our Faculty of Professional Services for Health Sciences, which outline the reason for travel/description, invoice date and amount claimed.
Please note we have not considered whether any exemptions may apply to such a request.
We should also point out that any revised request you submit will be treated as a new FOI request, and the 20 working-day time-limit will begin again.
We are sorry we cannot provide the data you requested, but trust this response explains our position.