Thank you for your email received on 3 July 2026, in which you made a request for access to certain information which may be held by the Infected Blood Compensation Authority.
The purpose of the Act is to allow a general right of access to information held at the time of a request, by a Public Authority (including the Infected Blood Compensation Authority), subject to certain limitations and exemptions.
We have now had the opportunity to fully consider your request and we provide a response for your attention.
You asked the following
We have been today advised by an IBCA claims manager that it is likely that all HIV cases which involve either slow progressors or elite controllers will fail the IBCA balance of probabilities test.
Please can you confirm the following:
- How many cases you currently have with slow progressors or elite controllers?
- Of these how many have been successful?
- How many are still being considered?
Our response
IBCA is unable to fulfil the entirety of your request. The reasons for this are set out below.
Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 exempts IBCA from the duty to comply with a request for information if the estimated cost of complying would exceed the ‘appropriate limit’. The ‘appropriate limit’ is specified in The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004, and for IBCA this is set at £450.This represents the estimated cost of one person spending 18 working hours in determining whether IBCA holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting it.
Regulation 4 (4) of the Fees Regulations 2004 sets out that costs incurred in determining whether the requested information is held, locating, retrieving and extracting information are to be estimated at a rate of £25 per staff member per hour, expected to be spent on those activities. This represents the estimated cost of one person spending 18 hours in determining whether IBCA holds the information and locating, retrieving and extracting it. Where the time for compliance with a request would exceed 18 hours, a request can be refused.
The cost of complying with your request exceeds the ‘appropriate limit’. This is because in order to respond to the request, IBCA would need to manually review every HIV claim and check all medical information, supporting evidence, and claim manager notes for evidence of ‘Elite Controllers’ or ‘Slow progressors’. Information regarding these two characteristics is not captured in a structured format.
We cannot give an accurate time estimate on how long it would take to retrieve this information on a claim by claim basis. However, giving a very conservative estimate of it taking 5 minutes to check each HIV claim, it will take over 49 hours. We anticipate that the amount of time would actually be far greater. This is in excess of the ‘appropriate limit’ of £450/18 hours of staff time. Therefore, IBCA is unable to provide you with the information you are seeking.
Under section 16 of the Freedom of Information Act, IBCA has a duty to provide advice and assistance when refusing a request under section 12, to assist applicants in refining their request. IBCA may be able to comply with your request within the appropriate limit if you were to refine and limit the scope of your request to give a date range in which we can focus our searches.