Staff
Health
Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green, Conservative)
To ask the Secretary of State for Health how much his Department spent on (a) recruitment agency fees, (b) outplacement agency fees for displaced or redundant staff and (c) staff training in each of the last 12 months.
Daniel Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich, Conservative)
The Department does not hold information on recruitment agency fees in the form requested. While the Department's central procurement system is able to identify total payments made to recruitment agencies it is not possible to isolate the fee element of any of those payments.
The total cost of fees for outplacement services in the past 12 months was £2,851.20 including VAT. Fees are not paid every month, only when required for the service. In the last 12 months only two payments were made: £1,042.80 for August and £1,808.40 for September.
Corporate departmental spend on staff training for learning and development (L&D) for the calendar year October 2011 to September 2012 (the most recent complete year for which data are available) is set out in the following table:
| £ | |
| 2011 | |
| October | 21,201.16 |
| November | 36,080.82 |
| December | 10,287.31 |
| 2012 | |
| January | 3,995.20 |
| February | 19,073.80 |
| March | 5,162.40 |
| April | 0 |
| May | 6,894.32 |
| June | 0 |
| July | 109,475.00 |
| August | 8,210.88 |
| September | 12,904.80 |
| Overall total | 233,285.69 |
The table outlines central L&D spend only, ie training that is funded centrally by human resources. Individual directorates may also have additional L&D budgets. However, this expenditure is not tracked or analysed centrally.