Asked by: Gareth Bacon (Conservative - Orpington)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, if he will provide a list of (a) professional staff networks and (b) social clubs operating within his Department; and if he will provide the (i) budgets and (ii) FTE staff time allocated to each group within each of the last three years.
Answered by Heather Wheeler
The Cabinet Office has a range of volunteer staff led staff networks and groups based on workplace disciplines, expertise and common interest areas. These do not have dedicated FTE but are carried out as part of their corporate objective. Central funding is at the discretion of the department and is decided on a case by case basis.
Additionally, there are a number of Civil Service employee networks that operate at cross government level, that can request funds for network-related activity from Civil Service HR on an ad-hoc business case basis from wider non-pay related costs. Decisions on granting funds depend on availability and alignment to Civil Service HR strategic priorities.