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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what is the percentage office workplace attendance requirement in each of the department’s offices, broken down by location; and whether attendance statistics are collated for each of those individual offices.

Defra wants thriving workplaces that benefit everyone and that meet the needs of our customers and partners. The department are committed to offering staff hybrid working to enable choice in where colleagues work, within a framework.

Recognising the value of coming together, like many other organisations across the Civil Service, staff are expected to attend workplaces for at least 60% of their working time (averaged over a 4-week period).

Attendance statistics are collated for departmental offices and are provided to senior management teams for the purposes of monitoring compliance with workplace attendance expectations.

This applies to employees in Defra, RPA, APHA & VMD, including any agency workers and contractors working alongside Defra.