Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, how many and what proportion of (a) women and (b) men have made a statutory application to request flexible working in his Department; and how many of those applications have been granted to date.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills operates a flexible working policy that enables employees to work flexibly wherever possible and where this meets the needs of the business. We have been offering our employees the opportunity to work flexibly since April 2012.

Decisions on how this operates for an individual employee, and consideration of statutory applications to request flexible working, are managed by line managers at a local level.

We do not hold central records on this and there would therefore be a disproportionate cost incurred in collecting this information from our line managers.