Question to the Northern Ireland Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, how many and what proportion of civil servants in his Department were on permanent home working contracts in 2025.

The Northern Ireland Office (NIO) does not hold a central record of which employees are working under remote-working arrangements.

The NIO remains committed to flexible working and the business benefits it offers, including supporting the Civil Service priority of ensuring continued, effective, and productive delivery across the full range of our services.

We differentiate formal, contractual remote-working arrangements from hybrid/informal working from home, which is a non-contractual arrangement. The NIO operates a hybrid approach led by business needs, and as a result, many employees work both from home and in the workplace on an informal basis.

Staff are expected to attend the workplace for a minimum of 60% of their working hours over a rolling 4-week period, with the exception of those with formal contractual remote-working contracts or specific arrangements in place, such as workplace adjustments.

The NIO does not hold central data on employees undertaking informal hybrid working.