Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many full-time staff worked in Defra Group Communications in each year since 2019.

The number of staff who worked in the communications directorate since 2019 as of 31 March each year is shown below

Alongside the core department, the Communications team provides communications support for five of the department’s largest arm’s length bodies including the Environment Agency, Natural England, the Animal and Plant Health Agency, the Forestry Commission and the Rural Payments Agency. The teams work across all communications disciplines in support of the policy and operational priorities within each of these organisations. This includes media, planning, stakeholder engagement, digital communications and internal communications across the six parts of the Defra group.

As Defra Group Communications staff work in an agile way in multiple organisations, it is not possible to provide granular full-time equivalent figures for each part of the group, including the core department.