Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, how many and what proportion of civil servants in his Department have been internally reassigned to preparations for the UK leaving the EU from oversight of local plans (a) in the last month, (b) in the last six months, (c) in the last 12 months and (d) since the 2016 EU referendum.

We do not have a record of the number of staff who have been internally reassigned to preparations for the UK leaving the EU against a definition of ‘oversight of local plans’ or for the specific time periods specified.

We can confirm that throughout the time periods specified the highest number of staff redeployed from other duties was in week commencing 21 October 2019 when a total of 219 Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) staff were working within our Departmental Operations Centre (DOC), approximately 9.5 per cent of all MHCLG staff.

We did not separately record the number of staff working in the DOC prior to the government’s decision to increase no deal preparations in December 2018 and at that time the number of people working in the DOC was approximately 40, approximately 2 per cent of all MHCLG staff.