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Departmental Manpower

Volume 476: debated on Wednesday 21 May 2008

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development how many (a) permanent civil service posts, (b) permanent non-civil service posts and (c) temporary or agency workers in employment in his Department there were in each month since May 2005. (199550)

The Department for International Development (DFID) provides employment statistics to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Prior to 2006, employment numbers were available only on an annual basis and from then on were collected quarterly.

Details of the available published DFID staffing statistics for permanent civil service employees, and temporary workers, in DFID from 2005 are contained in the following table.

Month/year

Permanent civil service employees

Temporary workers (i.e. fixed-term civil service employees on contracts of 12 months or less)

Total

March 2005

1880

0

1880

March 2006

1800

0

1800

June 2006

1780

0

1780

September 2006

1740

0

1740

December 2006

1750

10

1760

March 2007

1710

10

1720

June 2007

1720

10

1730

September 2007

1670

0

1670

December 2007

1660

0

1660

March 2008

1610

0

1610

Note:

Figures are rounded to the nearest 10

The definition of temporary workers follows the ONS definition which states that employees with fixed term contracts of 12 months or less should be regarded as temporary employees.

In response to the question about the numbers of our non-civil service posts, DFID employs staff appointed in country (SAIC) who are recruited locally to work in our network of over 50 offices overseas on local terms and conditions of service. The details of our SAIC staff are shown in the following table:

Month/year

Total

March 2005

989

March 2006

933

June 2006

899

September 2006

881

December 2006

882

March 2007

865

June 2007

837

September 2007

846

December 2007

854

March 2008

834

Prior to October 2007 there were no central records of agency workers within DFID so we are unable to provide historical numbers. Details of the centrally managed agency workers from October 2007 to March 2008 are shown in the following table.

Number

October

26

November

27

December

34

January

38

February

49

March

54