Ethnic breakdown of SIA licence holders
Published 31 May 2022
© Crown copyright 2022
This publication is licensed under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3.0 except where otherwise stated. To view this licence, visit nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3 or write to the Information Policy Team, The National Archives, Kew, London TW9 4DU, or email: psi@nationalarchives.gov.uk.
Where we have identified any third party copyright information you will need to obtain permission from the copyright holders concerned.
This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ethnic-breakdown-of-sia-licence-holders/ethnic-breakdown-of-sia-licence-holders
1. Request
I would like to know if the SIA holds information on the ethnic breakdown of licence holders - for example:
- white - male and female
- black - male and female
- asian - male and female
- other groups - male and female
2. Response
I confirm that we hold limited information, which cannot be relied upon as it is not yet representative of licence holders for the reasons set out below.
The provision of ethnicity information became a mandatory part of the application process for an SIA licence recently. Whilst we have accurate information on the nationality of our active licence holders, the same cannot be said of ethnicity.
Prior to this the provision of ethnicity information was optional and only a very small proportion of licence holders (6%) responded to our broadcast message to take the protected characteristics survey. This means that the survey results are not representative of SIA licence holders.
It will be a number of years until all our active licence holders will have been exposed to the protected characteristics survey during the application process.
[Reference: FOI 0341]