You asked
How many civil servants in your department have applied for permission from your department to stand for council seats from January 1st 2015?
How many of these requests were accepted, and how many were refused?
What conditions were imposed on those civil servants given permission to stand?
How many civil servants are there within your department who are currently serving councillors?
Please provide a breakdown of the numbers of councillors in your department that represent each political party.
We said
Thank you for your request.
It is the responsibility of every Civil Servant to understand the Civil Service Management Code and the obligation this places upon them. However, if a member of ONS staff wished to stand for a Council seat then it would be discussed between the member of staff and their line manager and, if agreed, would only be recorded centrally as 'special leave'.
As ONS does not hold a central record of the information you have requested the only way to obtain such information would be to make the request of every staff member within ONS. As we currently employ 3772 staff such an endeavour would exceed the cost limit found within Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act.