Workforce

The request was partially successful.

Dear Information Commissioner’s Office,

How many employees are currently working in your offices ( including branch offices and regional offices)? Please can you break down your workforce by nationalities.

Yours faithfully,

ZoeZ

AccessICOinformation, Information Commissioner's Office

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Information Commissioner's Office

20 October 2016

 

Case Reference Number IRQ0647835

 

Dear Zoe Z

Information request
 
I write in response to your email of 25 September 2016 in which you
submitted a request for information to the Information Commissioner’s
Office (ICO). Your request has been dealt with in accordance with the
Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).
 
Your request
 
“How many employees are currently working in your offices ( including
branch offices and regional offices)? Please can you break down your
workforce by nationalities.”
 
Our response
 
I can confirm we hold information that falls in the scope of your request.
 
Information held
 
The total employee headcount at the time of your request was 459
employees.
 
We do publish information about our employee headcount and other key facts
(although currently this will be mainly related to the 2015/16 financial
year). This can be found in our annual reports here:
[1]https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/our-inf... and on
our website:
[2]https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/our-inf...
 
Information withheld
 
We do hold information which relates to the nationality of ICO employees
but this is being withheld in reliance on the exemption at section 40(2)
of the FOIA.  In conjunction with section 40(3)(a)(i) of the FOIA, this
section allows a public authority to withhold information from a response
to a request under the FOIA when the information requested is personal
data relating to someone other than the requestor, and its disclosure
would contravene one of the data protection principles contained in
Schedule 1 of the DPA.
 
Whilst named individuals may not be easily identifiable from a
figure alone, and a figure itself is not obviously personal data, when
combined with information which is in the possession of, or likely to come
into the possession of, the data controller (in this case the Information
Commissioner), then it will be personal data. This is because if there are
relatively few employees of certain nationalities it is likely that the
individuals concerned could be identified from this information. 

We therefore take the view that disclosure of this information would be
outside the reasonable expectations of the individual(s) concerned and as
such, disclosure of this figure would be unfair, and a breach of the first
data protection principle which states that “Personal data shall be
processed fairly and lawfully …”.  This is why it is exempt from
disclosure under the exemption at s40(2) FOIA.
 
This is in line with our policy on the disclosure of employee information
which can be found here:
[3]https://ico.org.uk/media/about-the-ico/p...
 
As a matter of advice and assistance we can advise you that we do publish
some information relating to the ethnic origin of our staff in our
 ‘Annual Equality Information Publication’, the most recent of which can
be found here:
[4]https://ico.org.uk/media/about-the-ico/p...
 
This concludes our response to your request. I hope the information
provided is helpful.

Yours sincerely

Ian Goddard
Lead Information Access Officer
Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow,
Cheshire SK9 5AF
T. 01625 545823  F. 01625 524510  [5]ico.org.uk  [6]twitter.com/iconews
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The ICO's mission is to uphold information rights in the public interest.
To find out more about our work please visit our website, or subscribe to
our e-newsletter at ico.org.uk/newsletter.

If you are not the intended recipient of this email (and any attachment),
please inform the sender by return email and destroy all copies without
passing to any third parties.

If you'd like us to communicate with you in a particular way please do let
us know, or for more information about things to consider when
communicating with us by email, visit ico.org.uk/email

References

Visible links
1. https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/our-inf...
2. https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/our-inf...
3. https://ico.org.uk/media/about-the-ico/p...
4. https://ico.org.uk/media/about-the-ico/p...
5. http://ico.org.uk/
6. https://twitter.com/iconews