Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, how much the Department spent on unconscious bias training in each of the last five years.

The Civil Service Talent Action Plan, published in 2014, included a requirement that all civil servants complete learning on unconscious bias. Online learning was made available via Civil Service Learning (CSL) for all staff and a face to face course for the Senior Civil Service (SCS). As part of the introduction of the CSL Learning Platform for Government website in Autumn 2019, MHCLG has set an updated curriculum which outlines 'required' learning for all staff, including the SCS. This is inclusive of an e-learning course on Diversity and Inclusion, which includes 4 modules covering unconscious bias in various contexts (e.g. recruitment) and a stand-alone course on unconscious bias. There is no cost per use charge to the Department for online learning; data on spend in relation to these courses is therefore not held centrally and to gather the data for the whole department would exceed the disproportionate cost limit.