Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he has plans to move civil servant jobs in (a) his Department and (b) non-departmental public bodies and government agencies associated with his Department to York.

Defra has one of its four core hubs in York which is home to core department staff and many of our arm’s length bodies, including the Animal and Plant Health Agency, Rural Payments Agency, Marine Management Organisation and the Environment Agency. In September 2021 Defra had 875 civil servants in York, including 539 from the core department. This equates to around 8.8% of all our core Defra staff.

As announced on 19 November 2021 Defra is working to increase the number of roles outside London, including moving more to York. This will help deliver the Government’s places for growth programme, which is working to move 22,000 civil service roles out of London by 2030.