FOI reference: FOI-2025-2659
You asked
Can you please send me a copy of all letters/emails sent by Emma Rourke (as deputy national statistician for population) to any person not in UKSA or the wider civil service, since the start of 2023 and up to including the date of response to this request (but certainly up to the end of February 2025).
We said
Thank you for your request.
The scope of your request is very large. From an initial review of Emma Rourke's mailbox, we have determined we would need to sift and review c.19,000 emails to identify what information falls in scope of your request. This information would then need to be extracted and prepped ready for review. Alongside Emma's mailbox, we would also need to search for any Official Correspondence and Parliamentary Questions.
The cost limit for responding to a Freedom of Information request is £600 or 24 working hours, and in our view, we would need to exceed this to search for, locate, extract and collate the information in scope of your request.
Therefore, Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 is engaged, whereby a public authority is not obliged to answer a request if the cost of complying would exceed the appropriate limit.
We would advise limiting the scope of your request so that we can answer within the cost limit. You could do this by limiting your request time-frame as well as specifying a specific individual or organisation you are interested in.
Please note, some correspondence is published on the UK Statistics Authority website, which may be of interest.