Ms Maria Hurley:

On the first topic, to offer the Deputy some reassurance regarding vacancies we will provide her with a detailed breakdown. In broad terms, it is important to understand that more than half of our medium-term vacancies relate to specialist technology posts. One of the greatest difficulties we have had in this regard concerns the lack of availability of panels of staff ready to be appointed and the necessity, in some cases, to run tailored competitions.

On the statistical side, we run statistical competitions every year. It happened last year that our full panel of statisticians was exhausted by the autumn. Therefore, it is only vacancies that have crystallised on the statistical side since the autumn that continue into to this year. Added to that, it is important to note that, because we supply statisticians for secondment to the wider statistical system, we have a constant catalogue of requests coming in for statisticians to send on secondment. That has also created backlogs.

Turning to the other dimension, concerning risk management and the extent to which we engage with staff, whether it be through the Civil Service employee engagement survey, CSEES, or other channels, we have already published our action plan further to the CSEES survey. The action plan was developed in consultation with colleagues from across the organisation. There are now active working groups considering what actions are required to give effect to the objectives set out in the action plan. A key channel in the delivery of those actions is our engagement and innovation board, which is a long-standing structure in the CSO. It is a cross-staffing grade structure specifically targeted at affording a discussion forum for matters affecting staff in all areas of the business, both statistical and administrative.

The engagement and innovation board is just one of the forums we use to engage with staff. We have grade-based forums, a senior management group forum, a general management form, and grade-based forms for all the administrative grades. At present, we are in the process of completing a significant round of consultations in the preparation of the CSO people strategy to take us forward for the next several years in respect of the supports we are putting in place to develop our staff in terms of their technical skills and aptitude to deliver the supports required for the business and also to enable them to fulfil their full potential. I will follow up in writing with further detail, as the Deputy requested. I hope, however, my answer gives some illustration of the extensive variety of consultations and forums that are available to enable the flow of information in both directions across the entire organisation.