FOI release

FOI request - staff given permission to work from abroad

Case reference FOI2026/00894

Received 10 August 2026

Published 8 September 2026

Request

This is an information request relating to council officers being given permission to work from outside the United Kingdom. By United Kingdom, I refer to Northern Ireland, England, Wales and Scotland, not including the crown dependencies. Please include the following information, for the 2023/24, 2024/25, 2025/26 financial years: * The number of staff, per year, given permission to work from abroad * For each member of staff granted permission, please provide: * their pay band * the country they have been allowed to work from * the length of time that they have been allowed to work for and * * the dates they were allowed to work from abroad * The longest time a member of staff has been granted permission to work from abroad and what country they went to. * The highest ranking officer that was allowed to work from abroad * The current number of people working from abroad and where they are. If this is not possible to provide the information requested due to the information exceeding the cost of compliance limits identified in Section 12, please provide advice and assistance, under the Section 16 obligations of the Act, as to how I can refine my request. If you have any queries please don't hesitate to contact me via email or phone and I will be very happy to clarify what I am asking for. I would prefer a response via email, but if not possible, I will gladly accept letters to the address below. Please acknowledge this information request as soon as possible.

Response

The Council does not record this information by financial year. This information is recorded on a yearly basis and is only held for 2025 and 2026.

 

Please see below the information held and how it is recorded by the Council.

 

1. The number of staff, per year, given permission to work from abroad

 

Year	Number of staff
2025	5
2026 to date	5 or fewer

 

2. For each member of staff granted permission, please provide their pay band, the country they have been allowed to work from, the length of time that they have been allowed to work for and the dates they were allowed to work from abroad

 

The Council considers that the requested employee-level breakdown is exempt from disclosure under section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

 

The number of employees concerned is a small data set, and the requested information would provide a combination of individual employees' pay grades, countries, specific dates and duration of overseas working, which constitutes their personal data. Disclosure of this information in combination could enable individual members of staff to be identified and would therefore breach the data protection principles.

 

Section 40(2) provides an exemption from disclosure where the information constitutes the personal data of a third party and disclosure would contravene the data protection principles. The Council considers that disclosure of this level of information about identifiable employees would not be fair, lawful or within the reasonable expectations of the individuals concerned.

 

 

3. The longest time a member of staff has been granted permission to work from abroad and what country they went to.

 

The longest period granted was 168 working days.

 

The country has been withheld under section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 for the reasons outlined above.

 

4. The highest-ranking officer that was allowed to work from abroad

 

Grade 11.

 

5. The current number of people working from abroad and where they are

As at 1 September 2026, 5 or fewer members of staff were working from abroad.

 

Please note, where the data set is low, figures have been reported as 5 or fewer. This is to reduce the risk of identification of individual members of staff, particularly where the information could be cross-referenced with other publicly available information.

 

The precise figures and associated information are therefore withheld under section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, as disclosure could lead to the identification of individual employees and would contravene the data protection principles.

Documents

There are no documents for this release.

This is Oxford City Council's response to a freedom of information (FOI) or environmental information regulations (EIR) request.

You can browse our other responses or make a new FOI request.