You asked
How much time and money is spent dealing with FOI requests on an annual basis.
We said
Thank you for your request.
There is no information held by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) that would sufficiently answer your question. Whilst we can give accurate figures on how many requests have been received we do not measure how long each request has taken. The time taken to respond to any given request can vary from just a few minutes up to many days depending on its complexity, and can occupy the time of a single person or many people across the office.
Freedom of Information requests are logged and managed by the legal team within ONS, a role which takes approximately 0.5 full time equivalent of one HEO. This equates to around 950 hours per year and a cost (inclusive of training, equipment etc) of £18,000. The actual time and cost will be higher as other staff within ONS contribute to FOI responses but there is no reliable way to estimate this additional burden.
The number of Freedom of Information Requests received by ONS for the last three years are set out below:
2012 - 227 requests
2013 - 283 requests
2014 - 339 requests