Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many performance reviews were undertaken for staff in (a) his Department and (b) its agencies in each of the last five years; in how many such cases performance was rated as unsatisfactory or below; how many staff left as a result of such a rating; and what proportion of full-time equivalent staff this represented.

DWPs performance management policy utilises a team-based approach. The policy requires the performance of every employee to be robustly assessed on an ongoing basis. However, the approach, and these reviews do not involve employees below the Senior Civil Service being assigned a rating. Consequently, we are unable to provide data on employees rated as either satisfactory or unsatisfactory performers, nor how many staff left as a result of such a rating.