FOI release

FOI2022/00244: Committee Expertise Pool Ethnicity

This request was refused in part, so we didn't provide some of the information the requester asked for. This may include information where we can neither confirm nor deny that we hold it.

Case reference FOI2022/00244

Published 2 November 2022

Request

Request Received: 22 July 2022

Clarification Received: 9 August 2022

You have previously supplied data on committee membership and participation from the AHRC, ESRC, EPSRC and NERC each of which has a 'Peer Review College', and from the BBSRC whose equivalent is a 'Pool of Experts'. Here, I refer to them generically as 'expertise pools'. You have also supplied data from the MRC, although I could not find any reference to an associated equivalent expertise pool. It is possible that they may recruit into their committees directly with an annual call. It is also possible that they hold information about potential committee members based on applications or expressions of interest - it would be useful if you could please clarify. With this in mind, I would be grateful if UKRI could please supply the following data about these expertise pools, including any informal data held that are routinely used to populate the committees mentioned in FOI2020/00242 and FOI2021/00376: For the Councils AHRC, BBSRC, EPSRC, ESRC, MRC & NERC:

1. The number of individuals in any 'expertise pools' from which committee members are drawn, broken down by research council, ethnicity and year. This data to be presented in both formats used in previous FOI requests, namely aggregated ethnicity data by year (as per FOI2020/00242) and broader ethnicity categories, aggregated by year (as per FOI2021/00376).

2. If a council does not draw membership from an 'expertise pool', details of how members are recruited into their panels and any relevant ethnicity data held on their recruitment, broken down by research council, ethnicity and year.

3. For those councils who draw committee membership from 'expertise pools', the number of invitations issued to reach the panel membership numbers from the previous requests, broken down by research council, ethnicity and year. Presented in the same formats as Q1.

If it's possible to disaggregate data by year and ethnicity simultaneously, that would provide very useful information.

Response

Response Sent: 21 September 2022

Full details of this response are provided in the attached document.

Documents

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