You asked
For each of the last three years, please could you let me know:
- how many staff have attended any conferences, workshops or events, and how many of each type
- the cost of each mode of transport used by staff
- the cost of any non-transport related expenses related to the events
A breakdown of these figures by ONS office location is preferred, rather than totals.
We said
Thank you for your request.
ONS does not hold a central list of all conferences, workshops or events attended. The only way to obtain a complete list would be to go to each individual business area and ask them to speak to all of their staff to create such a list. Under the Freedom of Information Act there is no requirement for a public authority to create information in order to respond to a request.
Our accounts department do keep records of all expense claims made. However these are coded by businesses area rather than purpose of the claim. In order to identify those claims which relate to conferences, workshops or events each would have to be pulled up and read separately and free text fields read by a member of staff. ONS processes, on average, over 1,000 expense claims a month. Allowing only a minute per claim we would only be able to interrogate two months worth of claims before reaching the cost limit as set out in section 12 of the FOI Act. This would also not fully answer your query as some events would not require expense claims (for example those that are local to our offices).