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Written Question
Employment Agencies
Wednesday 4th February 2015

Asked by: Bill Esterson (Labour - Sefton Central)

Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, how many staff in his Department have been employed through employment or recruitment agencies in each year since 2010-11.

Answered by Tobias Ellwood

The Civil Service-wide Recruitment Freeze was introduced in May 2010, which limits new appointments to front-line and business critical roles only this usually means specialist roles. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office is reducing UK based headcount by 10% in the current Spending Round.

Recruitment agencies are used to recruit for positions that require specialist skills and expertise not available elsewhere in the organisation. The number of FCO staff who were employed through employment or recruitment agencies from 2010-11 onwards is:

2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 2014/15

36 11 78 75 16


Recruitment in 2012/13 increased as a result of a need to staff our recently established Corporate Services Centre in Milton Keynes. From 2013/14 onwards the data includes directly recruited summer and graduate interns.

The FCO also has a separate contract in place with Hays Specialist Recruitment for the provision of temporary staff for essential frontline roles whilst internal recruitment processes take place. The number of temporary staff who were employed through recruitment agencies from 2010-11 onwards, on contracts of varying length, is:


2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 2014/15

19 61 116 59 28

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