FOIs, Subject Access Requests, Parliamentary Questions and Official Correspondence for the financial year 2020 to 2021

Release date:
20 October 2021

FOI Reference: FOI/2021/3008

You asked

Please may you provide me with:

  1. The total number of Subject Access Requests received between 01/04/2020 - 31/03/2021
  2. The total number of Freedom of Information and EIR requests received between 01/04/2020 - 31/03/2021
  3. The total number of Complaints logged between 01/04/2020 - 31/03/2021
  4. The total number of Ministerial Correspondence received between 01/04/2020 - 31/03/2021
  5. The total number of Parliamentary Questions received between 01/04/2020 - 31/03/2021
  6. Finally, can you confirm the software application used to track these requests, i.e. eCase, iCasework, Cyclops, Excel, etc.

We said

Thank you for your request.

1)    Please see the following link to a previously answered FOI: FOI and SAR requests received and completed by ONS from 2018 to 2020. This provides:

  • The total number of Subject Access Requests received between 01/04/2020 - 31/03/2021
  • The total number of Freedom of Information and EIR requests received between 01/04/2020 - 31/03/2021

2)    Please also see the following link to a previously answered FOI, which provides the information requested regarding the applications used to manage SARs, FOIs, and Complaints: https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/foirequestssarsandcomplaintsreceivedandanswered2017to2019

3)    The number of complaints logged between April 2020 and March 2021:

A centralised logging system was set up on a Sharepoint application in 2020 to log complaints received by our Complaints Manager email address. However, please note that business areas also process their own complaints, which are not tracked centrally.

We ceased to log all complaints received to the Complaints Manager email address in November 2020, reflecting a change in our complaints handling policy. Since this date, we have only logged escalations on our system central system.

The breakdown of these logged complaints is:

  • 101 initial complaints logged between March 2020 and November 2020.
  • 17 escalations logged between November 2020 and September 2021.

4)    We received 234 pieces of Official Correspondence in the period between 01/04/2020 - 31/03/2021. Official Correspondence refers to correspondence (letter or email) received from, or on behalf of, a Parliamentarian in the any of the UK nations' legislative assemblies. This includes members of the House of Commons, House of Lords, Scottish Parliament, Welsh Senedd or the Northern Ireland Legislative Assembly.

5)    We received 255 Parliamentary Questions in the period between 01/04/2020 - 31/03/2021.

6)    We use Sharepoint to track received Official Correspondence and Parliamentary Questions.

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