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Recruitment Advertising

Volume 455: debated on Thursday 11 January 2007

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs how much his Department spent on recruitment advertising in each of the last three years. (107746)

This information can be obtained only at disproportionate cost.

Under the Civil Service Order in Council 1995, individual Government Departments and agencies have delegated authority for the recruitment of staff to the home civil service. The central rules on recruitment are set out in chapter 1.1 of the Civil Service Management Code.

When advertising a post, the vacancy manager will look to use the media most likely to attract people with the necessary skills. Within Defra a range of media are used from local newspapers, specialist magazines eg The Economist, Veterinary Record or People Management; the internet, to the more general public sector sections of the national newspaper job advertising eg The Guardian, The Sunday Times.

The cost of placing these adverts is met from local budgets and to provide the information requested would require an exercise to contact all current budget holders within Defra. Changes of structure within the Department would make it difficult to source the information for certain sectors.