Deputy Chief of Defence Staff (Personnel) Secretariat  
 
MINISTRY OF DEFENCE 
Level 7 Zone J 
Main Building, Whitehall 
London, SW1A 2HB 
 
Telephone: 020 
7218 9000
 
 
Your reference: 
 
Mr R Varley 
 
Via E-mail: 
Our reference: 
AIT 18-05-2009-100525-001 
 
www.whatdotheyknow.com (request 12049) 
Date: 
 29 July 2009 
 
 
Dear Mr Varley, 
 
Thank you for your email request for information under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act 
2000, which was dated 15 May 2009. 
 
I am aware that your email was answered in part by the PPPA at Cheadle Hulme in their 
response to you dated 21 May (Reference: AIT 18-05-2009-103727-002).  The outstanding 
issue that is answerable under the FOI Act is your request for statistics indicating the number 
of serving members of the Armed Forces who have declared their sexual orientation as being 
anything other than heterosexual on their HRMS or similar computer records.  I am sorry for 
the lateness of this reply.   
 
The JPA accounts used for Armed Forces personnel do not request that sexual orientation 
be recorded, as this information is not mandatory.  However, as you have stated, HRMS 
does request this.  The total number of military staff who have access to HRMS is 14,319 of 
which 63 have specifically declared their sexual orientation as being lesbian, bisexual or gay.  
A total of 1,633 people have chosen not to declare their sexual orientation and a further 
8,357 have not completed the field at all. 
 
You have also asked why the MOD requests information about sexual orientation from civil 
servants but not from members of the Armed Forces, and how, this being so, we comply with 
relevant legislation.  This part of your request does not come under the auspices of the FOI 
Act because your question requires an explanation of a policy, rather than the release of 
recorded information. It may help if I begin by explaining that there is no statutory 
requirement for employers to ask for information about the sexual orientation of their 
workforce.  There are however statutory requirements to carry out workforce monitoring for 
gender, race and disability. 
 
The MOD introduced three new fields to HRMS in April 2007 enabling civilian staff to declare 
their sexual orientation, gender status and religion or belief. These complimented existing 
fields covering disability and ethnicity and were established to enable the Department to 
understand better the composition of its civilian workforce, to gain better information about 
improving representation and to monitor the effectiveness of its diversity/equal opportunities 
policies.  
 

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If you are not satisfied with this response or you wish to complain about any aspect of the 
handling of your request, then you should contact me in the first instance.  If informal 
resolution is not possible and you are still dissatisfied then you may apply for an independent 
internal review by contacting the Head of Corporate Information, 6th Floor, MOD Main 
Building, Whitehall, SW1A 2HB (e-mail: [email address]).  Please note that any request 
for an internal review must be made within 40 working days of the date on which the attempt 
to reach informal resolution has come to an end. 
 
If you remain dissatisfied following an internal review, you may take your complaint to the 
Information Commissioner under the provision of Section 50 of the Freedom of Information 
Act.  Please note that the Information Commissioner will not investigate your case until the 
MOD internal review process has been completed.  Further details of the role and powers o 
the Information Commissioner can be found on the Commissioner’s website, 
http://www.ico.gov.uk 
 

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