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Deposited Papers
Department for Work and Pensions

Jan. 12 2024

Source Page: Letter dated 11/01/2024 from Viscount Younger of Leckie to Lord Scriven regarding what percentage of Department for Work and Pensions staff are skilled and trained on the use, application, and assessment of AI decisions, as discussed during the Oral Question on Department for Work and Pensions: AI. 2p.
Document: Scriven.pdf (PDF)

Found: Letter dated 11/01/2024 from Viscount Younger of Leckie to Lord Scriven regarding what percentage of Department

Written Question
Department for Work and Pensions: Staff
Monday 27th November 2023

Asked by: John McDonnell (Labour - Hayes and Harlington)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many vacancies there are within his Department; and what recent estimate he has made of the number of full-time equivalent staff that will be employed by his Department by the end of 2024.

Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

DWP have ambitious recruitment plans over 2023/24 and are filling approximately 4,400 posts a quarter, through internal and external recruitment to manage attrition and also grow key priority areas to respond to changing demand and commitments.

DWP has yet to sign off workforce plans for the period to end 2024, which forms part of the financial year 2024/25. DWP awaits further guidance from HMT on future Civil Service headcount levels following the chancellor’s announcement in October 2023, and will then be in a position to give an accurate estimate of FTEs employed in DWP by end 2024.

Written Question
Department for Work and Pensions: Staff
Tuesday 19th December 2023

Asked by: Vicky Foxcroft (Labour - Lewisham, Deptford)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps he is taking to help improve (a) the quality of recruitment and (b) staff retention levels within his Department.

Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

DWP is committed to improving its recruitment processes and improving candidate experience. The Resourcing Centre of Expertise has an ongoing work programme to ensure policy, guidance and tools support the business to fill high volumes of vacancies across a wide range of professions, grades, functions and locations. DWP work closely with recruitment suppliers, candidates and vacancy holders to identify ways to improve our processes and the quality of our recruitment outcomes.

DWP actively takes steps to promote and raise awareness of careers opportunities to increase attraction of diverse talent from the widest possible range of geographical, social, diversity and career backgrounds by:

  • Developing and launching corporate branding materials to support external recruitment activity and promote career opportunities in DWP to appeal to a broad range of applicants from entry level through to career changers and returners to the labour market. The branding provides consistent corporate attraction materials for DWP recruitment and is used on a range of social media, digital platforms and in outreach activities.
  • Promoting the DWP Employee Value Proposition (EVP) to the external labour market and widen the reach of DWP recruitment campaigns by promoting opportunities and employee stories on LinkedIn and the Civil Service Careers website.
  • Piloting use of diverse jobs boards which targets applicants with protected characteristics.
  • Delivering national communications campaigns for volume recruitment of critical Work Coach and Universal Credit Review roles.

Within the Civil Service Success Profiles framework, DWP use high quality selection tools which are centrally evaluated such as Civil Service online tests and video interviewing. Processes have been developed to increase the diversity of panel members and tested different approaches to evaluate their impact on diverse outcomes, inclusive candidate experience, and quality of hire.

The DWP People Strategy specifically sets out to ensure we offer fulfilling, rewarding careers that attract and retain motivated people. Most recently DWP have been implementing measures to increase retention by:

  • Using our people performance one to ones to increase awareness of partial retirement options, promoting options for part time employees to change their working pattern and using survey data to understand what is driving attrition trends and continue to create an environment where colleagues are highly motivated and retained.
  • By directly targeting all colleagues noted as leaving we have successfully increased the response rate to our leavers survey. We have revised the questions to provide more relevant insight and spoken to other Government Departments to learn from best practice.
  • Currently running a 3 month exit interview pilot in part of our operations to further build understanding of the reasons people are leaving the Department. As this will only be a proportion of the leavers that notify us during this period we will triangulate this data with other sources and additional business insight to ensure that we have a holistic picture upon which further action can be taken.
Written Question
Department for Work and Pensions: Staff
Tuesday 12th September 2023

Asked by: Vicky Foxcroft (Labour - Lewisham, Deptford)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people are employed by his Department to determine the outcome of work capability assessments as of 5 September 2023.

Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)

The latest information of the number of Full Time Equivalent (FTE) staff who are in paid employment and undertake decisions on Work Capability Assessments is in the table below:

Work Capability Assessment (WCA)

FTE

Universal Credit (UC)

480

Employment and Support Allowance (ESA)

100

Total

580

Source: Derived from the department’s Activity Based Model (ABM). Figures have been rounded to the nearest 10 and may not sum to the total due to the rounding.

Notes:

  • Data is drawn at the end of each month. Data is correct as of end of August 2023.
  • Figures were derived from the department’s Activity Based Model (ABM), which provides Full Time Equivalent (FTE) figures based on point in time estimate by line managers. They cover only FTE of staff with paid employment. They have been rounded to the nearest 10.
  • Figures include staff undertaking Work Capability Assessment decision making activities, including training, ESA WCA mandatory reconsiderations, ESA WCA appeals and telephony. UC mandatory reconsiderations and appeals have not been included as figures include all FTE working on UC mandatory reconsiderations and appeals, not just those related to Work Capability Assessment outcomes.
  • Management, administrative and support staff are not included. Figures do not include staff working on overtime.
  • The data is frequently revised and changes to definitions / benefits / DWP structure effect comparisons over time. It should therefore be treated with caution and must be seen as an indication of how staff have been deployed.
  • The number of staff is unpublished management information, collected and intended for internal department use and has not been quality assured to National Statistics or Official Statistics standard. As the department holds the information, we have released it.

Written Question
Department for Work and Pensions: Staff
Tuesday 12th September 2023

Asked by: Vicky Foxcroft (Labour - Lewisham, Deptford)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people are employed by his Department to determine the outcome of Personal Independence Payment claims as of 5 September 2023.

Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)

The latest information of the number of Full Time Equivalent (FTE) staff who are in paid employment and undertake decisions on Personal Independence Payment claims is in the table below:

Benefit

FTE

Personal Independence Payment

2,970

Source: derived from the department’s Activity Based Model (ABM).

Notes:

  • Data is drawn at the end of each month. Data is correct as of end of August 2023.
  • Figures were derived from the department’s Activity Based Model (ABM), which provides Full Time Equivalent (FTE) figures based on point in time estimate by line managers. They cover only FTE of staff with paid employment. They have been rounded to the nearest 10.
  • Figures include all staff undertaking decision making on new claims, reassessments, case manager training, award reviews, change of circumstances (unplanned award reviews), administrative exercises, unplanned award reviews triage, mandatory reconsiderations and appeals decision making.
  • Team leaders, case workers, visiting officers and administrative staff are not included. Figures do not include staff working on overtime.
  • FTE in training and training support for case managers, mandatory reconsiderations and appeals decision making have been included.
  • The figures exclude any HM Courts and Tribunals Service staff involved in the appeals process.
  • The data is frequently revised and changes to definitions / benefits / DWP structure effect comparisons over time. It should therefore be treated with caution and must be seen as an indication of how staff have been deployed.
  • The number of staff is unpublished management information, collected and intended for internal department use and has not been quality assured to National Statistics or Official Statistics standard. As the department holds the information, we have released it.

Deposited Papers
Department for Work and Pensions

Aug. 05 2009

Source Page: Log of PQs received by DWP following HMRC data-loss incident. 28 p.
Document: DEP2009-2274.xls (Excel)

Found: Work and Pensions, how many of his Department's staff have been disciplined for inappropriate use of

Deposited Papers
Department for Work and Pensions

Dec. 12 2008

Source Page: Organisational chart showing senior staff structure in the Department for Work and Pensions. 1 p.
Document: DEP2008-3073.pdf (PDF)

Found: Organisational chart showing senior staff structure in the Department for Work and Pensions. 1 p.

Written Question
State Retirement Pensions: Databases
Tuesday 23rd April 2024

Asked by: Angela Eagle (Labour - Wallasey)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many staff in his Department are responsible for manually updating records relevant to eligibility for the State Pension.

Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

This information is only available at disproportionate cost to The Department for Work & Pensions as the Department does not have a business requirement for this information to be retained.

Departmental Publication (Transparency)
Department for Work and Pensions

Apr. 24 2024

Source Page: DWP: workforce management information January 2024
Document: DWP: workforce management information January 2024 (webpage)

Found: Transparency data DWP: workforce management information January 2024 Report on departmental staff

Written Question
Department for Work and Pensions: Health and Safety
Monday 19th February 2024

Asked by: Chris Stephens (Scottish National Party - Glasgow South West)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether all (a) buildings and (b) workplaces staff from their Department occupy have a suitable and sufficient risk assessment under Section 3 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999.

Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

The Department for Work and Pensions has suitable and sufficient risk assessments in place across the Department in accordance with Section 3 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999.

There is a suite of generic risk assessments, which include building and people related hazards, used to manage and mitigate people safety risks across the Department. Where hazards are identified for a certain process or procedure not captured within the generic documents, these are included via specific risk assessments.

Suitable and sufficient risk assessments relating to the DWPs estate are completed whenever significant hazards are identified or where risk assessment is required by statute.