Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, 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.

All CO staff members (in scope) are allocated a performance marking at both the mid (Oct) and end of year (April) points of the performance year as part of their performance reviews. These performance markings are Exceeding, High Performing, Achieving, or Partially Met. The below table sets out how many performance reviews were undertaken and are further broken down by full time and part time staff.

The historical data for 2021 and 2022 cannot be segmented in the same format as the last three years, and so the data covers performance markings uploaded by line managers on our central system (SOP) between 2023-25. The process relies heavily on active engagement from the Line manager updating the central system so this may not capture all performance markings.

The data will not include all agencies as many have their own dedicated systems to record this information and are not subject to the CO performance processes. It is also important to note that not all colleagues are in scope at each cycle, as they need to have worked for the department for a minimum of 60 working days to be eligible for a marking.

This data covers all performance markings which have been uploaded onto our central system (SOP). Line managers are able to record individuals as 'Partially Met', however this does not automatically lead to poor performance measures as there are a number of reasons this may be appropriate (such as staff being new to grade or new to role). Line managers also often seek to address poor performance locally, and not all instances would be recorded on the system.