Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, 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 Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) supports flexible working for all its employees and all FCO staff can ask to work flexibly on an ad hoc basis or submit a formal application for a regular change to their working pattern subject to business needs. Staff are able to appeal if a formal request to work flexibly is refused. The FCO does not centrally record requests for flexible working and therefore does not hold data on number of applications made.

Line managers are responsible for recording and monitoring working patterns for their teams. In 2013 we also introduced a new form into our Management Information system in which we encourage staff to voluntarily record details so that we can provide more accurate management information on flexible working patterns. Based on information recorded on our HR database on 31 October 2014, including the voluntary declarations that have been made, the gender breakdown of the different types of current flexible working are as follows:

Flexible Working Type Female Male Total
Compressed Hours 20 9 29
Flexi-time 22 19 41
Job share 17 1 18
Part time/reduced hours 154 15 169
Remote Working 87 63 150
Total 300 107 407
Total as a % of Workforce 15% 4% 9%

(These figures include all FCO civil servants based in the UK and overseas, They do not include staff from FCO Services, (an Executive Agency and Trading Fund of the FCO) or locally engaged staff employed overseas).