To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many staff of her Department were recorded absent for non-medical reasons on (a) 2 February 2009 and (b) 3 February 2009; what estimate she has made of the (i) cost to her Department and (ii) number of working hours lost due to such absence; and what guidance her Department issued to staff in respect of absence on these days. (260469)

The disruption caused by the extreme weather conditions on 2 and 3 February this year caused severe difficulty for many Home Office staff travelling to and from work.

As a result guidance was provided to line managers to remind them that they should consider sympathetically circumstances where staff were unable to report for work or have had to leave early due to severe travel disruption. This guidance reflected existing departmental arrangements on travel disruptions set out in the Staff Handbook. These arrangements provide for situations where staff experience unavoidable travel delays due to travel disruption or other exceptional circumstances which may mean they are either late for work or are unable to attend work. In these circumstances those staff that use the departmental flexi time system may be given a credit to compensate for travel delays. Depending on circumstances, other staff might not be required to make up time lost.

It was left to managers to decide locally whether the provisions allowed for in the Staff Handbook should be applied in individual cases. Records of the number of staff who were not able to attend work on 2 and 3 February as a result of the disruption to the transport system were not collated centrally and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.

For the same reason it is also not possible to provide an estimate of the cost to the Department or the total number of working hours that were lost.