Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what the cost was of (a) settlement agreements and (b) special severance payments made to departing staff in the last year.

Since 2019 the flexible Performance Management Framework has enabled departments to adopt a Performance Management approach to best suit their organisational and cultural needs. DCMS operates a continual performance management approach throughout the year, which includes data on those not meeting performance expectations through the Managing Poor Performance process.

There is no common definition of ‘top performance’ across Government, and we do not hold performance data for top performers for staff below SCS level at this time.

For Senior Civil Servants, DCMS follows the SCS framework for performance management. There are four possible ratings available with the top marking being ‘Exceeding’. For the performance year 1 April 2024 - 31 March 2025, there were 65 SCS in scope of the end of year performance management process. Given the relatively small number of Senior Civil Servants in scope of the process, sharing the number and proportion of those receiving the top box marking could be disclosive and is therefore being suppressed.