British Broadcasting Corporation
Information Rights
BBC Legal Department, London Broadcasting House,
4th floor Zone E, Portland Place, London, W1A 1AA.
bbc.co.uk/foi
xxx@xxx.xx.xx
Jon Howard
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.xxx
14 March 2024
Dear Jon,
Freedom of Information request – RFI20240191
Thank you for your request to the BBC of 16 February seeking the following information
under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act 2000:
(1) How many people work in your FOI team (or team responsible for dealing with FOI
requests)?
(2) What is the grade/salary band of the most senior person who writes FOI responses? (i.e.
what grade are they and what salary range covers this grade)
(3) What is the grade/salary band of the most senior person who writes internal review
responses?
(4) What is the grade/salary band of the most senior person who writes submissions for the
ICO?
(5) What is the grade/salary band of the manager of the FOI team?
(6) In 2023, 2022 and 2021 respectively how many FOI and EIR requests did you deal with?
Question 1
The BBC Information Rights team are responsible for managing the process for handling
FOI requests received by the BBC, as well as dealing with Data Protection issues such as
subject access requests, erasure requests, data breaches etc. At the date of your request
this team consists of a total of 20 employees.
However, as well as the centralised system outlined above, the BBC has a network of
business specialists across the organisation who contribute to FOI responses when the need
arises; they undertake this work in addition to their regular roles as opposed to being
specifically employed as part of the FOI process.
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Questions 2, 3 and 4
For the purposes of this response we are providing information regarding the central
Information Rights team as detailed above.
A number of people at various pay bands in the team may contribute to the writing of FOI
responses, Internal Reviews, and submissions to the ICO, the highest of which is Band F. The
broad band salary range for a Band F is £64,103 to £117,523.
The Director of Information Rights (see question 5) may also have oversight when required.
Question 5
The Director of Information Rights is in the senior leader (SL) band. There are no set salary
ranges for staff at this level.
Question 6
The BBC dealt with 2,016 FOI requests in 2021, 1,382 FOI requests in 2022, and 1,663 FOI
requests in 2023.
The BBC is not covered by the Environmental Information Regulations, but treats any such
requests under the FOI Act.
As set out in section 6(1)(b)(i ) of the Act, our subsidiaries (including BBC Studioworks
Limited, UKTV, BBC Global News Ltd and BBC Studios Ltd), as well as the charities BBC
Media Action and BBC Children in Need, are not subject to the Act. As such, information
relating to these entities is not considered in the above response.
Appeal Rights
If you are not satisfied that we have complied with the Act in responding to your request,
you have the right to an internal review by a BBC manager or lawyer. Please contact us at
the address above, explaining what you would like us to review and including your reference
number. A request for an internal review must be made within 40 working days of receiving
the BBC’s response to your original request.
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If you are not satisfied with the internal review, you can appeal to the Information
Commissioner. The contact details are: Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House,
Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF, Tel: 0303 123 1113 or s
ee https://ico.org.uk/. Yours sincerely
Information Rights
