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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many performance reviews were undertaken for staff in (a) her Department and (b) its agencies in each of the last five years; in how many such cases performance was rated as unsatisfactory or below; how many staff left as a result of such a rating; and what proportion of full-time equivalent staff this represented.

The following table summarises the information held on the total number of performance ratings where these were available, and the number of cases where a rating was unsatisfactory or below. Please note that the policy for performance management has changed over this period. End-year performance ratings were removed for most staff in April 23. From this date performance ratings are only collected for Senior Civil Servants in APHA, RPA, VMD and Core Defra, senior leaders in NE, and all staff in EA.

Additionally, NE ratings for senior leaders are collated by NE directly and are not included in the data below from April 23 onwards.

The reportable data Defra holds does not include the reason for a dismissal and therefore a link to performance rating cannot be made. This limitation means that the requested information on number of staff who left because of a poor performance rating, and the proportion this represents, is not available.

*No ratings available for RPA.

**SCS only for APHA, RPA, VMD, Core Defra, no ratings available for NE.

c. These numbers are suppressed in accordance with the Defra data protection policy.