Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what the average time taken was to fill vacancies for (a) Administrative Assistant/Administrative Officer, (b) Executive Officer, (c) Senior Executive Officer/Higher Executive Officer, (d) Grades six and seven civil servants and (e) Senior Civil Service grade positions in his Department in each of the last five financial years.

​The average recruitment time to fill vacancies has been calculated as the time from when the campaign was launched to contract start time. This includes the time it takes to get security clearance. For permanent Foreign and Commonwealth Office staff security clearance is at the highest level, Developed Vetting (DV). We only have detailed records back to 2014/2015. The following table shows the average times to fill vacancies, by grade, for the past four financial years: