Departmental Homeworking
Health
Written answers and statements, 4 November 2009
David Simpson (Upper Bann, DUP)
To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many staff of his Department have been authorised to work from home in the last 12 months.
Phil Hope (Minister of State (the East Midlands), Regional Affairs; Corby, Labour)
The Department operates a homeworking scheme under which a person's home is formally designated as their regular place of work for some or all of the working week. Arrangements to work from home are made by local managers. Records are not kept centrally about this.
Homeworking is one of a number of arrangements that the Department provides to promote flexible working, including part-time working, flexitime schemes, job sharing, part year appointments, unpaid leave, and compressing the working week into less than five days. The use of information technology also allows many staff to work from home on an occasional basis.