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.
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.