Department of Health: Information Officers

(asked on 2nd February 2017) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many (a) of his Department's and (b) NHS England staff are employed in media relations and communications roles; and how much was spent on the salaries of those staff members in each of the last three years.


Answered by
 Portrait
David Mowat
This question was answered on 7th February 2017

Details of communications staff numbers and spend on salaries for the Department’s staff are shown in the following table.

On staff numbers, to ensure consistency, the Department has provided information according to the following criteria for public relations and communications staff:

- Press and public relations;

- Stakeholder relations;

- Campaigns (including marketing and strategic communications);

- Digital Communications (not IT/digital service teams); and

- Internal Communications.

On salary spend for communications staff in the Department, we have provided figures for Financial Years 2013-14, 2014-15 and 2015-16:

Department of Health

Number of Communications Staff Full Time Equivalent (FTE)2

Salary costs1

2013/14

98

£5,342,173

2014/15

106.5

£5,617,946

2015/16

101

£5,645,073

Notes:

1 Inclusive of all salary costs for permanent and non-permanent staff.

2 Figures are for staff numbers at 31 March for each financial year.

Details of NHS England’s communications staff numbers and spend on salaries is shown in the following table:

NHS England

Number of Communications Staff (FTE)

Estimated on salary costs

2013/14

36

£1,916,243

2014/15

43

£2,158,703

2015/16

52

£2,555,059

NHS England has advised that it can only provide estimated salary figures due to the way its accounts are structured. The figures are estimated from averages based on staff bandings.

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