Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many and what proportion of their Department’s employees work from home at least one day a week.

Current data on office occupancy across the Civil Service is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/civil-service-headquarters-occupancy-data

There is no data collected on the proportion of departmental civil servants who are working from home. Decisions about workforce and working arrangements are delegated to individual departments. We have set an expectation of working eight days in the office per month. Days are agreed across teams and we have a desk booking system to help monitor office capacity.

Over the past two years, the Civil Service as a whole has had to work in a more agile way whilst still delivering essential public services. Before the pandemic, most departments worked on a basis of a ratio of desks to staff and that remains the case, therefore hybrid working arrangements are not new.