Data on Government Redundancies

Request

I am seeking anonymised data on the following from 01 January 2020 to the most recent date available:

• The total number of redundancies made by your department, broken down by calendar financial year.
• The total monetary value (£) of redundancy payments made by your department from, broken down by calendar financial year.
• The number of proposed or planned redundancies that have been formally identified but not yet completed.
• The estimated total cost (£) of redundancy payments associated with these proposed redundancies.

Outcome

Some information provided.

Response

I can confirm that The National Archives holds information relevant to your request.

We are pleased to be able to provide some of this information to you.

We are unable to provide you with some of the information you have requested, specifically question 2 regarding the total monetary value of redundancy payments, because it is covered by the exemption at section 40(2) of the FOI Act, which exempts personal information about a ‘third party’. For further information about why this exemption has been applied, please see the explanatory annex at the end of this page.

I am seeking anonymised data on the following from 01 January 2020 to the most recent date available:

• The total number of redundancies made by your department, broken down by calendar financial year.

• The total monetary value (£) of redundancy payments made by your department from, broken down by calendar financial year:

Withheld under Section 40(2) (see explanatory annex)

• The number of proposed or planned redundancies that have been formally identified but not yet completed:

None

• The estimated total cost (£) of redundancy payments associated with these proposed redundancies:

N/A

Please also find below the above response in a CSV format.

Annexe

Exemptions applied

Section 40(2): Personal Information where the applicant is not the data subject

Section 40 exempts personal information about a ‘third party’ (someone other than the requester), if revealing it would breach the terms of Data Protection Legislation. Data Protection Legislation prevents personal information from release if it would be unfair or at odds with the reason why it was collected, or where the subject had officially served notice that releasing it would cause them damage or distress.

Personal information must be processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner as set out by Art. 5 of the United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR).

In this case, the exemption applies because the document contains the personal and the sensitive personal information of one identified individual assumed to be still living, namely the one person made redundant at The National Archives since 2020. While this individual is not named, disclosing the total monetary value of redundancy payments made in this period effectively discloses the exact amount of the redundancy payment they received.

This individual would have no expectation that this information would be made available by The National Archives in the public domain during their lifetimes; to do so would be unfair and would risk causing damage and distress, which would contravene the first data protection principle.

Further guidance on the application of this exemption can be found on the ICO website.