FOI_25-160 Administrative and Secretarial Staff

Date of response: 12 June 2025

We have now considered your request of 23 May 2025 for the following information:

Question 1. Could you confirm how many UEA members of staff in total currently have an Administrative and Secretarial (SC) post which is Grade 5?

Question 2. Could you confirm how many UEA members of staff currently have an Administrative and Secretarial (SC) post which is Grade 4?

Question 3. Could you confirm how many UEA members of staff, currently Administrative and Secretarial (SC) Grade 5, are being moved to Suitable Alternative Employment at Administrative and Secretarial (SC) Grade 4 as part of UEA’s 2024/ 2025 financial sustainability process?

Question 4. Could you confirm how many Grade 5 Administrative and Secretarial (SC) job roles after 1st August 2025 require supervisory experience as an essential criteria of the person specification? Please list the job roles as well as the number of posts.

Question 5. Please provide details of any current job roles across the university, Grade 5 Administrative and Secretarial (SC) or above, that do not require supervisory experience as an essential criteria of the person specification? Please include the number of people who hold such posts.

Question 6. Please list the number of Administrative and Secretarial (SC) Grade 4 posts currently vacant which form a part of the new structure in place from 1st August 2025. This will include PGR and Study Abroad teams. Include the role and the number of positions currently vacant.

Our response:

We regret that on this occasion it is not possible to provide the requested information.

Under Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act, we can confirm that the University does hold the information requested, however on this occasion it is not possible for us to provide any of the information relating to current job roles across the university, Grade 5 Administrative and Secretarial (SC) or above, that do not require supervisory experience as an essential criteria of the person specification (question 5 of your request).

We have determined that the cost of finding and assembling the requested information will exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ as defined by section 12 of the Act and the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004/3244.

'The ‘appropriate limit’ of £450, which equates to 18 hours’ work, as defined by the Information Commissioner’s Office, can relate to one request in its entirety or to a series of linked requests. If the University cannot locate, retrieve and extract some or all of the requested information within the 18 hours we are not obliged to retrieve any of the requested information.

Information relating to current job roles across the university, Grade 5 Administrative and Secretarial (SC) or above, that do not require supervisory experience as an essential criteria of the person specification is held within our People and Culture Division (Human Resource Services).

Currently, as of the date of your request, we have identified 477 staff which may fall into the scope of your request. The only way of identifying, extracting and recording the exact information you seek would be to interrogate each individual staff member’s job description.

We have calculated it would take three minutes per staff record, or 23.85 hours, to locate and manually interrogate each individual job description. Which exceeds the appropriate time-limit as outlined above.

Under Section 16 of the Act, to provide advice and guidance, to assist you in formulating a request to which we can respond, we can provide a response to questions 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6 in full.

Please note we have not considered whether any exemptions may apply to such a request.

We should also point out that any revised request you submit will be treated as a new FOI request, and the 20 working-day time-limit will begin again.

We are sorry we cannot provide the data you requested, but trust this response explains our position.