Correspondence from a deputy national statistician
Dear Office for National Statistics,
Can you please send me a copy of all letters/emails sent by Emma Rourke (as deputy national statistician for population) to any person not in UKSA or the wider civil service, since the start of 2023 and up to including the date of response to this request (but certainly up to the end of February 2025).
Yours faithfully,
Simon Briscoe
Thank you for your Freedom of Information request.
We can confirm that your request has been received and is being dealt
with. We will aim to respond to your request as soon as possible, and no
later than 20 working days from when we received your request. Should we
experience any delays with processing your request by this deadline, we
will keep you informed.
If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact us at
[ONS request email].
In the meantime, please take a look at our previously published FOI
requests via the following link:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transpare....
If you find the information that you are looking for on our website,
please get back in touch with us to close your request.
Yours Faithfully
The Freedom of Information Team
Office for National Statistics
Our Reference: FOI-2025-2659
Dear Simon,
Thank you for your email requesting data pertaining to External emails and
letters sent by Emma Rourke in 2023 to 2025.
I am writing to confirm that the Office for National Statistics has now
completed its search for the information which you requested, and the
response can be found here:
[1]https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transpare...
You have the right to have this response to your Freedom of Information
request reviewed internally by an internal review process and, if you
remain unhappy with the decision, by the Information Commissioner. If you
would like to have the decision reviewed, please email the Freedom of
Information Team at ‘[ONS request email]’ or write to The FoI Team, Office
for National Statistics, Segensworth Road, Titchfield PO15 5RR, and mark
your correspondence "Internal Review".
If you have any queries about this email, please contact the Freedom of
Information Team ('[ONS request email]').
Please remember to quote the reference number above in any future
communications.
Kind regards,
The Freedom of Information Team | UK Statistics Authority | Awdurdod
Ystadegau’r Deyrnas Unedig
@UKStatsAuth | [2][email address] |
[3]http://www.statisticsauthority.gov.uk
References
Visible links
1. https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transpare...
2. mailto:[email%20address]
3. http://www.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/
Dear FOI Team,
Thank you for the reply.
From what you say, about 30 emails are sent by Ms Rourke each working day. I can only imagine that the bulk of these are internal or to gov.uk addresses, which I asked to be excluded. I imagine these are easy to remove from your search. Please restrict my request to the year 2024.
If you reject this request on the same grounds, do please tell me how many emails are in the limited scope of this latest request.
Yours sincerely,
Simon Briscoe
Thank you for your Freedom of Information request.
We can confirm that your request has been received and is being dealt
with. We will aim to respond to your request as soon as possible, and no
later than 20 working days from when we received your request. Should we
experience any delays with processing your request by this deadline, we
will keep you informed.
If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact us at
[ONS request email].
In the meantime, please take a look at our previously published FOI
requests via the following link:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transpare....
If you find the information that you are looking for on our website,
please get back in touch with us to close your request.
Yours Faithfully
The Freedom of Information Team
Office for National Statistics
Our Reference: FOI-2025-2723
Dear Simon,
Thank you for your email requesting Emma Rourke’s external emails.
I am writing to confirm that the Office for National Statistics has now
completed its search for the information which you requested, and the
response can be found here:
You asked:
Follow up to [1]FOI 2659:
From what you say, about 30 emails are sent by Ms Rourke each working day.
I can only imagine that the bulk of these are internal or to gov.uk
addresses, which I asked to be excluded. I imagine these are easy to
remove from your search. Please restrict my request to the year 2024.
If you reject this request on the same grounds, do please tell me how many
emails are in the limited scope of this latest request.
We said:
Thank you for your request.
Following an assessment of your resubmitted request, we believe that the
cost limit threshold would also be met in order to fully answer your
second request. This is due to the following manual processing that would
be required.
It is incorrect that it is easy to remove internal emails from our inbox
searches. Unfortunately, Outlook does not have the functionality to make
this more efficient. We have attempted several inbox search functions to
narrow the search as much as possible. There are c.7500 emails in Emma
Rourke’s sent items from 2024, and the application of search rules has
enabled us to remove external government agencies only. This has left
c.6500 emails, encompassing internal ONS and external non-government
agency emails. It would take us at least 1 minute per email to assess
whether each is in scope of the request. We therefore believe this would
take at least 108 hours for us to complete this request.
The cost limit for replying to a Freedom of Information request is £600 or
24 hours work, and in our view we would need to greatly exceed this to
fully action your request. Therefore, Section 12 of the Freedom of
Information Act 2000 is engaged, whereby a public authority is not obliged
to answer a request if the cost of complying would exceed the appropriate
limit.
As mentioned in our [2]previous reply, you will need to restrict the scope
of your request to enable us to answer within the cost limit. We advised
to limit the time frame of your request as well as specifying a specific
recipient or organisation you are interested in. The more detail provided
about the information you would like to receive, the more likely we are to
be able to direct our searches closely and answer within the cost limit.
You have the right to have this response to your Freedom of Information
request reviewed internally by an internal review process and, if you
remain unhappy with the decision, by the Information Commissioner. If you
would like to have the decision reviewed please email the Freedom of
Information Team at ‘[ONS request email]’ or write to The FoI Team, Office
for National Statistics, Segensworth Road, Titchfield PO15 5RR, and mark
your correspondence "Internal Review".
If you have any queries about this email, please contact the Freedom of
Information Team ('[ONS request email]').
Please remember to quote the reference number above in any future
communications.
Kind regards,
The Freedom of Information Team | UK Statistics Authority | Awdurdod
Ystadegau’r Deyrnas Unedig
@UKStatsAuth | [3][email address] |
[4]http://www.statisticsauthority.gov.uk
References
Visible links
1. https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transpare...
2. https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transpare...
3. mailto:[email%20address]
4. http://www.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/
We work to defend the right to FOI for everyone
Help us protect your right to hold public authorities to account. Donate and support our work.
Donate Now