Job Advert Information (FOI2551)

Request

We received your original request on 13 October 2025 and your revised request on 6 November 2025.

Original Request of 13 October 2025

Could you please send me a list of all jobs advertised by Ordnance Survey Great Britain from January 2019 listing the Title of the Post, Payscale/Grade, the closing date for applications, the Essential Criteria and the Desirable Criteria.

If it easier for OSGB to process this request by sharing copies of the Candidate Information Booklets in PDF format rather than extracting the information I will happily receive the information that way.

Revised Request of 6 November 2025

Could you clarify if OSGB's job adverts text that includes "commentary on requirements" will include the equivalent information to essential/desired criteria and that I wouldn't miss out on any such information based on using "commentary on requirements" information as a reference point? That there would be nothing missing from these requirements that an applicant would need to respond to?

If so then yes please provide the data for April 2020 onwards for:

• Title of the Post
• Pay Grade
• Closing date for applications
• job advert text that was used for each campaign, which includes the salary range and commentary on requirements for job advertisements

Response to original request of 12 October 2025

We do hold some of the information you have requested, however, we are unable to comply with your request and provide the information, as we consider some of the information to be exempt from disclosure under section 12 of the FOIA, as explained below:

Timeframe & Available Information

I confirm that we do not hold the requested information prior to April 2020.

We do hold data from April 2020, that includes the following information:

• Title of the Post
• Pay Grade
• Closing date for applications

We can provide a spreadsheet with this data.

Payscale, Essential Criteria and Desirable Criteria

We hold the job advert text that was used for each campaign, which includes the salary range and commentary on requirements for job advertisements from April 2020. This is based on, but does not explicitly list, essential or desirable criteria. We can extract this as an Excel or CSV file, but please note it will be a lot of text.

We estimate that it will take us in excess of the applicable time limit to determine the appropriate material and locate, retrieve, and extract the information in reference to Payscale, Essential Criteria and Desirable Criteria from each job advert manually. Therefore, your request will not be processed further.

Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 makes provision for public authorities to refuse requests for information where the authority estimates the cost of dealing with them would exceed the appropriate limit, which is set at £450.00 / 18 hours.

This is an absolute exemption and therefore not subject to the public interest test.

Advice and Assistance

With a view to bringing your request within the cost limit, to clarify we can provide you with the following information from April 2020:

1. Spreadsheet containing: Title of the Post; Pay Grade; and Closing Date.
2. Job Advert text containing: Salary range and commentary on requirements

We will treat a refined request as a new request for information.

Response to revised request of 6 November 2025

I confirm that Ordnance Survey does hold the information you have requested.

I am pleased to provide you with this Excel spreadsheet (xlsx) with regard to your request. Please note that some role postings may appear more than once within a relatively short time frame where we did not successfully recruit from the first posting.