Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate he has made of the number of jobs that will be affected by the closure of jobcentres; and what the roles and functions of those jobs will be.

We currently have approximately 440 people nationally at risk of redundancy, less than our original estimate, as a result of the changes to our estate. These people work in a wide variety of job roles and functions, which includes those working or based in jobcentres, processing centres and in Corporate Centre roles.

However we expect this number to reduce as we redeploy as many people as we can across DWP and other government departments. We are continuing redeployment activity and therefore the number at risk may still reduce further. To place these fissures in context the overall DWP workforce is approximately 80,000.