Business surveys

You asked

1. Since the information ONS seek under statutory business surveys seems to be largely available from VAT returns – why are they creating extra bureaucracy and bothering individual businesses?

2. What is the number of businesses ONS request information from each month?

3. What percentage of businesses at present do not return their unsolicited requests for information?

4. How many organisations do ONS prosecute per annum for non-return of information?

5. What is this as a percentage of total non-responses?

6. How much of the respondents stock is rotated each month?

7. Why in particular are they making a prosecution against an individual business?

8. Given that every other interaction businesses now have with the UK Government and its agencies is on an ‘e’ basis, why is the ONS still requesting information on a cumbersome and expensive paper based basis?

9. Can ONS give an approximate value to the cost of an individual prosecution for the ONS?

10. Are ONS aware that the internal costs in interacting and attending court, for an individual business, are likely to be in excess of £2000?

We said

 1. Unfortunately, it is not possible for the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to access and use data held by other government departments at present due to legal constraints. The only exception to this rule is minimal Pay as You Earn (PAYE) data that is received in arrears from HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), the data includes the number of employees under each PAYE reference. However, data sharing is a key goal as we are aware of the burden that surveys impose on small and medium businesses. As such, ONS has a dedicated department that is currently working closely with HMRC to ensure that ONS has appropriate legal gateways available to be able to gain access not only to VAT Return data but also to PAYE Real Time Information and Corporation Tax data. It is anticipated that once these legal gateways are enabled there should be a noticeable reduction in the burden imposed on business and also an improvement in the overall quality of the outputs. ONS is also undertaking further analysis as to how annual accounts placed at Companies House may further reduce the burden on businesses if appropriate access can be obtained.

 4. Actual prosecutions are very low, there were 14 prosecutions undertaken in the calendar year of 2014. Prosecution is not taken lightly and is used as a last resort. Every effort is made to assist and encourage businesses to complete statutory survey questionnaires.

 7. Business surveys conducted by ONS are done so under the Statistics of Trade Act 1947 and completion of the questionnaires is compulsory. Once a business is selected we cannot exempt that business from the survey, nor remove it from the Inter-Departmental Business Register to prevent future selection. Therefore, businesses selected for an ONS business survey are legally obliged to respond to each survey questionnaire it receives. ONS in turn is obliged to ensure that businesses comply with their legal duties. Should you choose not to respond to a questionnaire you have received ONS may be forced to refer the case to a Magistrate. This action is a last resort for ONS.

 8. ONS has developed a facility to allow respondents to submit data securely over the Internet. However, this is currently only in use for a very limited number of surveys, and requires further development before use for other surveys could be considered. The development of electronic questionnaires is a strategic objective for ONS and is the subject of a major development programme at present.

 9. and 10. The cost of prosecution is difficult to estimate as the staff employed on the enforcement team deal with many thousands of cases each year; our intention is to encourage compliance and not to punish and this is reflected in the low number of prosecutions.

All businesses contribute to the economy and this contribution has to be measured both for formulating Government decisions on the economy and for the creation of the National Accounts for the UK. Our staff will do all that they can to encourage businesses to respond, but when businesses continue to ignore statutory requests then we have no choice but to resort to our legal powers. ONS is not in a position to comment on the extent of potential costs incurred by a business being prosecuted as a result of non-compliance.

2, 3, 5, and 6. The information that has been requested under the Freedom of Information request is not held by ONS is the form requested and the cost involved in compiling this data is not considered to be reasonable. The request has not specified whether the request is for all ONS surveys or for business surveys. Given the circumstances we have assumed the request is for business surveys only. ONS conducts around 70 business surveys which all select businesses independently from each other and using selection criteria that are specific to each survey. Therefore, in order to produce the data requested we would have to run bespoke reports on each individual survey and compile this data. Given the cost of IM time to write and run the reports and the time required to compile the data the cost of the request out weighs any benefit of producing the data. Consequently we estimate that the cost of complying with your request would exceed the appropriate limit of £600. The appropriate limit has been specified in regulations and for central Government it is set at £600. This represents the estimated cost of one person spending 3½ working days in determining whether the Department holds the information, and locating, retrieving and extracting the information, as set out in section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act.