Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, how many permanent civil servants in his Department are staff without assigned posts; and how many are placed in an equivalent (a) people action team, (b) priority movers list, (c) redeployment register, (d) talent pool and (e) skills match hub in the most recent period for which data is available.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) operate a Directorate Flexible Resource (DFR) pool. The DFR is the FCDO's resourcing model for when staff are between substantive roles in our rotational model of home and overseas roles. The DFR offers important agility for the Department, and to support staff in between roles/when returning from overseas. Those in between roles are working within their Directorates whilst looking for a substantive position.

Each Department is responsible for setting their redundancy procedures in line with the Cabinet Office issued 2016 Civil Service Redundancy Protocol. This document is publicly available guidance, published on gov.uk. The Civil Service does not formally use the terms, 'redeployment registers', 'people action teams', or 'priority movers lists', but the Redundancy Protocol does set out the expectations placed on departments when it comes to managing their employees who are without posts due to restructuring or job reduction plans.

There is no central policy relating to 'Talent pools' in the Civil Service. Departmental approaches to managing talent vary and are not governed by any central guidance or policy.