Publication scheme

This guide describes the information that we make routinely available, and how to find it.

How we publish information

We use our website as the principal way to publish information about our organisation and activities.

We also publish some of our information on data.gov.uk.

For information that we don't publish, we've explained in this guide how it can be accessed.

The following types of information will not generally be made routinely available:

  • information in draft form
  • information that would be impractical or resource intensive to prepare for routine release
  • information that is no longer readily available because it is archived, or retrieving it would be too difficult, impractical or resource intensive to prepare for routine release
  • information whose release is prohibited by law or exempt under the FOIA or is otherwise considered to be protected from disclosure.

We routinely publish information within the following classifications:

Who we are and what we do

Information about our organisation, its structure, locations and how to contact us.

How to contact NICE

Our contact us page provides information on how to contact us with a general inquiry (including our email address) and how to find our offices in Manchester and London. It also includes details on how to make a freedom of information request and how to submit a media enquiry.

Information about our organisation

We help practitioners and commissioners get the best care to patients, fast, while ensuring value for the taxpayer.

You can find information about us on our website, including:

  • Who we are: our history, structure and key responsibilities.
  • What we do: our guidance, advice, quality standards and information services for health, public health and social care.
  • Communities: essential information for the key groups that we work with, including GPs, local government, public health professions, social care professionals and members of the public.  
  • Our charter, which outlines information on our function, the principles that guide our work, our methods and processes and how we involve people.
  • Information on how we develop NICE guidance, including:
    • guidelines
    • guidance relating to:
      • technology appraisals
      • medical technologies
      • diagnostic, interventional procedures
      • highly specialised technologies
      • health technology evaluation (including early value assessment).
  • Our late-stage assessment approach for medical technologies.
  • Information on how we bring our guidance together by topic.
  • Our NICE guidance page, where you can browse guidance, NICE advice and quality standards.

Organisational structure and roles and responsibilities

We publish information about our organisational structure, roles and responsibilities and our board, executive team and directorates on our website.

Board and executive team members

We publish biographical details of our non-executive directors and executive team members on our website.  

Information relating to the legislation relevant to our function

We are an executive non-departmental body set up by the Health and Social Care Act 2012. Please contact us for further information relating to our functions under the Health and Social Care Act.  

Information on our partnership working

We work in partnership with organisations in the UK and across the world. Information relating to our research projects and partners and international partnerships can be found on our website.  

What we spend and how we spend it

Financial information relating to projected and actual income, and expenditure, procurement, contracts and financial audit.

Financial statements

We publish annual financial statements in our annual report and accounts. You'll find annual reports and accounts from previous years in our public board papers.

Information on our financial performance during the year, including variance from financial plans, can be found in the finance section of the integrated performance report (PowerPoint) in our public board papers.

Standing orders and standing financial instructions

Our standing orders instructions (Word) and standing financial instructions (Word) provide the framework for how we undertake our work and take decisions.

Transparency of spend

We publish our spend over £25,000 on our website and on Data.Gov

Data on our contracts under £25,000 is not currently published. Please contact us if you would like to request this information.

Capital expenditure

Information on our capital expenditure can be found in the finance section of the integrated performance report in our public board papers.

Senior staff and board members allowances expenses

Our board and executive team allowances and expenses are published annually on our website. 

Staff pay, organograms and grading structures

You can find information about our staff roles and salaries on data.gov.uk.

Directors’ remuneration is listed in our annual report and accounts. The pay structure for staff is determined by the NHS Agenda for Change pay scales.

Our gender pay gap report is published annually on our website. This includes our gender pay gap data for the 12 months leading up to 31 March 2023.

Information on our staff composition is also published in our annual report and accounts (PDF).

Our gender equality plan 2023-2025 (Word), which is a requirement of Horizon Europe, is published on our website.  

Our partnership with trade union representatives

Information on our trade union officials, the percentages of time and bill spent on facility time and paid trade union activities for the 12 months leading up to March 2023 can be found in our trade union facility time report and our annual report and accounts (PDF).

Procurement and tendering procedures

All organisations wishing to submit tenders are expected to comply with:

  • public sector rules for procurement
  • our terms and conditions for supply
  • the requirements relating to individual procurements.

Contact us to find out more about our procedures for the acquisition of goods and services.

Details of available tenders and organisations interested in working with us, or providing goods or services, will be listed on the Contracts Finder website. You can register there to receive email alerts about the work that we are tendering for.

Details of supplier payment performance data (Excel) are also available on our website.

Corporate credit card expenditure

Figures relating to corporate credit card expenditure are published on our website:

Our priorities and progress

Strategies and plans, performance and indicators and plans.

The corporate publications section on our website provides information on:

How we make decisions

Decision making processes and records of decisions.

Senior level meetings

Public Board

We hold 5 public board meetings a year. We publish the agendas, papers and minutes for these meetings and keep them on our website for 3 years. Archived papers more than 3 years old are available on request.

Each public board meeting includes an executive team report and integrated performance report which update on our progress with the objectives and performance indicators in our business plan. The reports can be found in our public board papers.

Executive team

Minutes from our monthly executive team meetings are published on our website 6 months after the meeting. Agendas and papers are available on request subject to any exemptions under the FOIA.

Guidance executive

Our guidance executive meets weekly to sign-off guidance and other products for publication. The papers are available on request once the guidance they refer to has been published subject to any exemptions under the FOIA.

Patient and public involvement

Information on how we engage with and involve patients, carers, the public and medicines and prescribing associates in our work is available on the people and communities section of our website.

We publish information on how people can get involved in our work and decision-making processes. 

We also publish information on shared decision making. Shared decision making is a joint process in which a healthcare professional works together with a person to reach a decision about care.

Our patient and public involvement policy is available on our website.

Public consultations

We conduct public consultations on our draft guidance. Our current consultations can be viewed on our website.

Our policies and procedures

Current written protocols, policies and procedures for delivering our services and responsibilities.

Policies, procedures and codes of practice

We publish the main policies relating to our governance on our website. This includes policies relating to complaints, risk management, gifts and hospitality, and declaring and managing interests. Policies relating to employment of staff are available on request.

Privacy

We publish our privacy notice on our website. This explains what you can expect when we collect your personal information and your rights under data protection legislation.

Information governance and records management

Contact information for our data protection officer is available in our privacy notice.

Our information governance and records management framework and policy formally establishes our approach to information governance and records management, including the organisational arrangements, roles and responsibilities and how we achieve compliance with relevant legislation.  

Our retention and disposal schedule is our best practice guidance on the retention, disposal or archiving of our records. The schedule supports compliance with legislation including The Public Records Act 1958, UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, and the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA), as well as national and international standards and codes of practice, including the NHSx Records Management Code of Practice 2023.

Please contact us for further information on our information governance and records management framework and policy or our retention and disposal schedule.

Our appraisal methodology for records 1999-2013 outlines the process of determining which records should be retained due to ongoing business or historical value and which should be disposed of.

Making a request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000

As a public sector body, we have a legal obligation to respond to requests for information under the FOIA. Details on what information is already available, how to request information from us, how we respond to requests, if there is a charge for requests and what to do if you’re unhappy with our response are published on the freedom of information section of our website..

Making an individual rights request under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

Information about how to make an individual rights request and how we respond to the requests is available in our privacy notice.

Complaints

Our general complaints policy and procedure (Word) is published in our privacy notice. This sets out how we deal with general complaints, including complaints about how we have processed your personal data.  

The copyright in the material listed in this publication scheme is owned by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence unless otherwise stated.

The supply of documents under the Freedom of Information Act does not give the recipient of that information the right to re-use the documents in a way that would infringe our copyright or any third-party copyright, for example, by commercial use.

Brief extracts of the material may be reproduced under the fair dealing provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 for the purposes of research for non-commercial purposes, private study, criticism, review and news reporting.

Further details are available in our terms and conditions of use.

CCTV

CCTV is installed in our offices for the purpose of security only and may be disclosed to the police. We ensure the operation of our CCTV is in accordance with guidance provided by the Information Commissioners Office.

Lists and registers

Information we are currently required to hold in publicly available registers.

Public registers

The lists and registers we make publicly available on our website include:

Information relating to our main contractors is not currently available on our website. Please contact us to find out more.

The services we offer

We help practitioners and commissioners get the best care to patients, fast, while ensuring value for the taxpayer.

We do this by:

  • producing useful and usable guidance for health and care practitioners
  • providing rigorous, independent assessment of complex evidence for new health technologies
  • developing recommendations that focus on what matters most and drive innovation into the hands of health and care practitioners
  • encouraging the uptake of best practice to improve outcomes for everyone.

Further information relating to the services that we offer is published on our website, including:

Keeping our publication scheme up to date

Our information governance and records management team is responsible for ensuring that this publication scheme is kept up to date. Colleagues across the organisation are consulted to ensure that the information included in the publication scheme is correct.

The links included in the publication scheme are reviewed every three months by the information governance and records management team to ensure that the reader is directed to correct and up to date information.

About the Freedom of Information Act 

The Freedom of Information Act 2000 provides a right of access to recorded information held by public authorities, including arm’s length bodies such as NICE.  

The FOIA aims to promote a culture of openness and accountability, to improve understanding of how public authorities carry out their duties, make decisions and spend public money. The FOIA achieves this by requiring public authorities to make information about themselves and their activities routinely available to the public.