Information about Stonewall Workplace Equality Index (WEI).

The request was partially successful.

Dear Oxfordshire County Council,

Please can you

1. Confirm whether your organisation applied to be part of the Stonewall Workplace Equality Index in 2021 (for 2022) (NB the index was suspended in 2020/21 because of Covid)

2. Give details of the total amount of money you paid to Stonewall in 2021 whether or not as payment for goods or services.

3. State whether you intend to continue your membership of any Stonewall scheme in the future, and if so which.

If the answer to 1 C) is yes, please supply:

4. Any application you made in 2021 to be included on Stonewall’s Workplace Equality Index, including any attachments or appendices to those applications. Please redact personal details if necessary.

5. Any feedback you received in 2021/22 from Stonewall in relation to either application or programme. This must include the priorities or objectives written by your organisation’s representative at the end of the feedback form.

EXEMPTIONS?

If your organisation is considering refusing to disclose feedback received as part of the Stonewall scheme by relying on section 41 (confidential information) and/or section 43 (commercial interest) of FOI, please note the recent ICO decisions IC-129040-Y4T2 and IC-125081-Q8J6 which rejected these reasons. Sex Matters has written a short briefing on these two ICO decisions: please see www.sex-matters.org/wp-content/uploads/2...

Yours faithfully,
L Sparling

Joint Commissioning FOI, Oxfordshire County Council

1 Attachment

Our reference:  20189 FOI

 

Dear L Sparling,

 

Thank you for your request of 30 July 2022 in which you asked for
information about Stonewall Workplace Equality Index (WEI).  Please find
our response to your questions below in bold:

 

 

 

 1. Confirm whether your organisation applied to be part of the Stonewall
Workplace Equality Index in 2021 (for 2022)  (NB the index was
suspended in 2020/21 because of Covid).

 

Yes, OCC made a submission to the 2022 WEI.

 2. Give details of the total amount of money you paid to Stonewall in
2021 whether or not as payment for goods or services.

April 2021 - £2500 - Diversity Champion Membership

April 2021 - £950 - Education Champions Programme for the period (01/04/21
– 31/03/22).

 3. State whether you intend to continue your membership of any Stonewall
scheme in the future, and if so which.

We have renewed Corporate Diversity Champion Membership until
31/03/2023.

 

If the answer to 1 C) is yes, please supply:

 

 4. Any application you made in 2021 to be included on Stonewall’s
Workplace Equality Index, including any attachments or appendices to
those applications. Please redact personal details if necessary.

 

Please find attached documents titled, ‘WE122 redacted.pdf’.

 

The Council has redacted the following information from the disclosure:

 

 1. The names and contact details of Council employees whose roles are not
sufficiently senior to warrant the inclusion of this information and
 2. The names, addresses and contact details of all third parties who are
not Council staff.

 

The Council considers that this information is exempt from disclosure
under section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (“FOIA”). 
Section 40(2) provides that information shall not be disclosed where it
constitutes the personal data of someone other than the applicant and that
disclosure would satisfy one of the following three conditions:

 

 1. That disclosure would breach any of the data protection principles or
would do so if the exemptions in section 24(1) of the Data Protection
Act 2018 (manual unstructured data held by public authorities) were
disregarded.;
 2. That the disclosure of the information to a member of the public
otherwise than under this Act would contravene Article 21 of the GDPR
(general processing: right to object to processing); or
 3. That on a request under Article 15(1) of the GDPR (general processing:
right of access by the data subject) for access to personal data, the
information would be withheld in reliance on provision made by or
under section 15, 16 or 26 of, or Schedule 2, 3 or 4 to, the Data
Protection Act 2018, or (b)on a request under section 45(1)(b) of that
Act (law enforcement processing: right of access by the data subject),
the information would be withheld in reliance on subsection (4) of
that section

 

In this case, the relevant condition is the first condition. 
Specifically, the council considers that the first data protection
principle would be breached; namely, that disclosure of the redacted
information would not be fair for the following reasons:

 

 1. Part of this information constitutes special category data and so
represents information which should remain private;
 2. The reasonable expectations of the data subjects and the nature of the
information itself leads the Council to conclude that the data
subjects could not reasonably expect that this information would be
disclosed;
 3. Neither this, nor similar information has been released into the
public domain by the data subjects or anyone else;
 4. That the principles of transparency and accountability under the FOIA
do not override the data subjects’ reasonable expectations that this
information would not be disclosed; and
 5. That the legitimate interests in the public having access to this
information do not outweigh the interests in preserving the rights and
freedoms of the data subjects.

 

In reaching this decision, the Council noted that the following
consequences may occur if this information was disclosed:

 

 1. The data subject’s would not expect this information to be released.

 

In light of the above, the Council considers it justified to uphold this
exemption by applying redactions to the disclosure.

5. Any feedback you received in 2021/22 from Stonewall in relation to
either application or programme. This must include the priorities or
objectives written by your organisation’s representative at the end of the
feedback form.

 

Please see attached feedback.

 

 

Internal review

If you are dissatisfied with the service or response to your request, you
can ask for an internal review as follows:

 

• Contact the Freedom of Information team in Customers and
Organisational Development:  [1][Oxfordshire County Council request email] 
• Write to the Freedom of Information team at the FREEPOST address:

Freedom of Information Team
Oxfordshire County Council
FREEPOST RTLL-ECKS-GLUA
Oxford OX1 1YA

 

If you remain dissatisfied with the handling of your request or complaint,
you have a right to appeal to the Information Commissioner at:

The Information Commissioner's Office,

Wycliffe House,

Water Lane,

Wilmslow,

Cheshire,

SK9 5AF

Telephone: 0303 123 1113

Website: [2]www.ico.gov.uk

 

Please let me know if you have further enquiries. I would be grateful if
you could use the reference number given at the top of this email.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

Lauren Rushen

Senior Policy Officer

Localities and Partnership

Oxfordshire County Council

Email: [3][email address]

[4]www.oxfordshire.gov.uk

 

This email, including attachments, may contain confidential information.
If you have received it in error, please notify the sender by reply and
delete it immediately. Views expressed by the sender may not be those of
Oxfordshire County Council. Council emails are subject to the Freedom of
Information Act 2000. [5]email disclaimer. For information about how
Oxfordshire County Council manages your personal information please see
our [6]Privacy Notice.

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