DWP Central Freedom of Information Team
e-mail
: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxx.xxx.xx
Our Ref: 2020-21524
14 May 2020
Dear Calderdale Against Corruption,
Thank you for your Freedom of Information request received on 1 May 2020.
You asked:
“We were asked to revise a FOI request which you claimed exemption for under section
12 of the relevant act.
We are in the process of doing so, but in the mean time we would like you to provide the
following information.
1) The number of claimants per benefit type who also claim for more than one spouse,
broken down by ethnicity, where provided by the claimant, and grouped by tax year
(obviously starting in the current tax year and going back as far as the section 12 limit
allows).”
We can confirm that whilst we may hold some information falling within the description
specified in your request we estimate that the cost of complying with your request would
exceed the appropriate limit for central Government set by regulations at £600. This represents
the estimated cost of one person spending 3½ working days in determining whether the
Department holds the information, and locating, retrieving and extracting it. Under section 12 of
the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) the Department is not therefore obliged to comply with
your request and we will not be processing it further.
Under section 16 of the Act we should assist the requester in helping narrow their request so
that it may fall beneath the cost limit. We would recommend that you limit your request to only
ask for figures relating to Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and Jobseeker’s
Allowance (JSA), and also to remove the requirement for those who claim for more than one
spouse. In addition, we would recommend requesting these figures to reflect the time period
available within the Official Statistics (see below). We will consider afresh any revised request
however we cannot guarantee that any revised request will fall within the cost limit.
You may be interested to know that the Department publishes quarterly Official and National
Statistics for ESA and JSA claimants on the Stat-Xplore website. The latest statistics are
available to August 2019 and these figures can be broken down by ethnicity from Aug 2007 for
JSA and Nov 2008 for ESA and can be accessed he
re: https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/
Guidance on how to extract information required from Stat-Xplore can be found at:
https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/online-help/Getting-Started.html
If you have any queries about this letter, please contact us quoting the reference number
above.
Yours sincerely,
DWP Central FoI Team
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Your right to complain under the Freedom of Information Act
If you are not happy with this response you may request an internal review by e-mailing
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxx.xxx.xx or by writing to DWP, Central FoI Team, Caxton
House, Tothill Street, SW1H 9NA. Any review request should be submitted within two months
of the date of this letter.
If you are not content with the outcome of the internal review you may apply directly to the
Information Commissioner’s Office for a decision. Generally, the Commissioner cannot make a
decision unless you have exhausted our own complaints procedure. The Information
Commissioner can be contacted at: The Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House,
Water Lane, Wilmslow Cheshire SK9 5A
F https://ico.org.uk/