You asked
This is a request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Please provide any information that you hold answering to any of the following descriptions:
Any application you made in 2019 or 2020 to be a "Stonewall Diversity Champion" or to be included on Stonewall's "Workplace Equality Index," including any attachments or appendices to those applications. Please redact personal details if necessary.
Any feedback you received in 2019, 2020 or 2021 from Stonewall in relation to either application or programme.
Any other communication you have received from Stonewall in 2019, 2020 or 2021 unless privileged or otherwise exempt from disclosure (but if you claim privilege or exemption in relation to any material, please say in broad terms what the material is and the basis on which you claim to be entitled to withhold it).
Full details of any equality impact assessment you carried out connected with any of these applications (including any equality impact assessment carried out prior to an earlier application of the same kind, if no further assessment was done).
Details of the total amount of money you paid to Stonewall (i) in 2019; (ii) in 2020, whether or not as payment for goods or services.
Whether you intend to continue your membership of any Stonewall scheme in the future, and if so which.
Any correspondence not already covered in the above requests that the ONS has had, in any written form, and any notes from meetings, virtual meetings or telephone calls held with Stonewall or their representatives, between 1st June 2020 and the present day, which relate to, or impact on, the wording of the planned questions in the 2021 Census on sex, gender identity and/or trans status. Information which is privileged or otherwise exempt from disclosure can be withheld (but if you claim privilege or exemption in relation to any material, please say in broad terms what the material is and the basis on which you claim to be entitled to withhold it).
We said
Thank you for your request.
In order to ensure that we have fully answered your request, we would need to search across the email accounts of all staff members who have engaged with Stonewall, which would cover several areas of ONS. We would also be required to search across all files, shared drives and personal workspaces for correspondence received or sent, and documents relating to all meetings across two years. The search would also need to encompass a wide range of possible search terms to ensure all relevant documents are found. The cost limit for replying to a Freedom of Information request is £600 or 24 hours work, and in our view we would need to greatly exceed this with your request.
We would therefore request that you consider limiting the scope of your request to allow us to respond within the cost limit.
It would be helpful to reduce the time period of your request and limiting the scope of your request to a particular subject matter.
You may be interested in the following previously answered FOI response, which provides some information regarding ONS' Stonewall membership: https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/onsstonewallmembership.