The head of a children’s charity has described as “completely absurd” a refusal by the Government to release health and safety records for Bermuda’s childcare facilities.

Sheelagh Cooper, from the Coalition for the Protection for Children, said the Department of Health’s denial of a public access to information request by The Royal Gazette was unacceptable when such a high proportion of preschool children on the island were cared for outside of their own homes.

“That is completely absurd,” Ms Cooper said, adding that this newspaper was “right to ask that question” as she estimated more than 85 per cent of Bermuda’s black children were in out-of-home care during the day before starting school.

This newspaper submitted a Pati request in February, asking for the date on which every childcare establishment was last visited by environmental health inspectors and the report from that visit, as well as a list of complaints received about childcare providers.

There are 55 nurseries, daycare centres and preschools and 71 home care facilities registered with the Department of Health, caring for about 2,500 children during the working week.

The Department said in its refusal letter that granting the request would “cause a substantial and unreasonable interference with or disruption of the other work of the public authority”.

We appealed the decision to the head of the public authority, Ministry of Health permanent secretary Jennifer Attride-Stirling.

But she supported the decision of the Department’s information officer, claiming in a letter dated July 22 that releasing information on complaints was not in the public interest and “would have or could reasonably be expected to have an adverse effect on the commercial interests” of the childcare providers involved.

She explained that environmental health reports were maintained in individual files for each provider so it was too much work to collate them all.

“To retrieve the requested information would require removing an officer from frontline public health duties to individually retrieve the information. The Department doesn’t have resources to undertake this task at this time.”

Ms Cooper said: “That is not a valid excuse, as those records should be readily available in a file somewhere, unless of course they don’t actually exist.”

The charity boss challenged the Department to provide a dollar figure for how much it would cost to retrieve the records and make them publicly available.

“We are considering offering to pay the cost,” said Ms Cooper.

As well as health and safety records and a list of complaints for the past five years, this newspaper’s Pati request sought:

• a list of all registered childcare providers;

• a list of investigations and outcomes arising from complaints for the past five years;

• any records regarding the safety of outdoor playground and indoor play equipment at registered childcare premises; and

• information on staff and student numbers at every registered provider.

The Public Access to Information Act requires public authorities to respond to requests within six weeks, though an extension for another six weeks is allowed.

The Department of Health extended the response time because it said to deal with the application in the initial timeframe would interfere with its day-to-day work.

On May 17, information officer Verlina Bishop provided her decision, telling this newspaper she was denying access to the “majority of the records requested”.

The Department did share its list of registered childcare providers, plus staff and student numbers at the 55 registered nurseries, daycare centres and preschools.

And it has agreed, in response to a separate Pati request from The Royal Gazette, to release health and safety records for the island’s ten public preschools this month.

But Ms Bishop refused to disclose the other records on administrative grounds due to the volume of work that would be involved.

We narrowed our request a little, asking if we could have a list of complaints and investigations for the last year but that was denied too.

Ms Bishop’s response revealed that the Department of Health does not have a central, searchable database of complaints and investigations or any way of easily retrieving health and safety records for all childcare providers. That means parents deciding where to have their children cared for while they work cannot compare the health and safety performance of all the island’s childcare premises or discover which facilities have been the subject of complaints, have been investigated and the outcome of any inquiries.

Dr Attride-Stirling acknowledged in her July 22 response that a list of investigations for the past year was “not maintained by the Department in a form that is readily retrievable at this time”.

She wrote: “We recognise that this is a deficit in our procedures and are actively working to develop systems to automate the collation of pooled or anonymised reports.”

The permanent secretary said information on complaints could not be disclosed because it would contain personal information, information received in confidence and information that could damage the commercial interests of childcare providers.

She also said the Department would not release records from the last year regarding safety concerns about playground and other play equipment as they would contain personal information which was exempt from disclosure.

The Royal Gazette will appeal Dr Attride-Stirling’s decision to the independent information commissioner, as is the right of any Pati requester under the Act.

The 2010 Bermuda census said 70 per cent of children aged up to five who were not at primary school were cared for outside their own home: 56 per cent at nurseries, daycare centres or preschools and 14 per cent in other homes.