I confirm that Ordnance Survey does hold the information that you have requested, however, we are unable to comply with your request and provide the information, as we consider the information to be exempt from disclosure under section 12 of the FOIA, as explained below.
Section 12 (Cost limit)
Organisational spend on social media advertising is not held in one central location, to be able so supply you with the information requested would require the various departments to complete a manual exercise, to search and analyse the records held to be able to attribute the spend to a specific media platform.
In addition, we may not hold records relating to which form of social media platform was used for all the spend figures. As this information is not readily accessible the time spent dealing with the request will exceed a period of 18 hours and we are therefore entitled to refuse to comply with the request pursuant to section 12(1) of the FOIA, where the authority estimates the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit.
This is an absolute exemption and therefore not subject to the public interest test,
However, under the duty to provide information and assistance in accordance with section 16 of FOIA, we can provide the following information which may assist you in this matter.
With a view to bringing your request within the cost limit, Ordnance Survey can provide the total spend by OS on social media for each of the three years requested, however, we would not be able to break the total for each year down by form of social medial platform.
To clarify, we can provide you with a total figure on social media advertising spend for 2019-20, 2020-21 and 2021-22.
We will treat a refined request as a new request for information.