You asked
I am currently researching the number of telecommuters or remote workers in the UK. This is someone that works at least 1 day a week from their home location rather than their office location.
Do you have these statistics? If you do then can you send via email?
We said
Thank you for your recent query regarding the number of workers in the UK who work at least one day a week from their home location.
We published data on the rates and levels of home workers in reply to a user request in April 2016. The rates and levels were calculated using data from the Labour Force Survey (LFS). The published rates and levels relate to the period January to March 2015 and were calculated using the variable ‘HOME – whether working from home in main job’. This published data can be found on our website at:
As you are interested in the number of people who work at least one day a week from their home location, the LFS variable, ‘HOMED- worked at least one FULL day at home in reference week in main job,‘ would be a more appropriate variable to use to calculate the levels of home workers for your purposes. Unfortunately we do not currently have any published data created using that variable. However, information on the number of people working from home at least one day a week can be obtained from the ONS Social Survey customer services team. Special extracts and tabulations of data are available to order (subject to legal frameworks, disclosure control, resources and agreement of costs where appropriate).
Such enquiries should be made to socialsurveys@ons.gov.uk
As this information is already available to you via this route, ONS considers that s.21(1) applies to this request and the information does not have to be supplied under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act. s.21(1) is an absolute exemption and no consideration of the public interest test needs to be applied.
Another route would be to access the Labour Force Survey datasets at the UK Data Service if you are able to run your own analysis.
Details of how to access the data can be found here - http://ukdataservice.ac.uk/get-data/how-to-access.aspx
Data can be downloaded free of charge for non-commercial purposes but if charges are applicable, you will be notified during the ordering process.
Advice for commercial users - http://ukdataservice.ac.uk/get-data/how-to-access/registration.aspx#/tab-commercial-users
Charges - http://ukdataservice.ac.uk/get-data/how-to-access/charges.aspx
List of LFS datasets at the UK Data Service - http://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/?q=labour+force+survey