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19 Jun 2008 : Column 1076W—continued
Departmental Training
Mr. Hoban: To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what training courses were (a) available to and (b) taken up by civil servants in his Department in the last 12 months. [210576]
Jonathan Shaw: DEFRA encourages staff to develop their skills and capability outside of traditional training courses. Over the past 12 months DEFRA staff had access to a range of management training aligned to the organisation's strategic objectives. Management Information shows that 2,436 core DEFRA staff attended internal training courses in the last financial year.
Environment Agency: Manpower
Miss McIntosh: To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs for what reasons contractors have replaced the Environment Agency’s electricians, carpenters, welders and divers at its in-house craft workshop in the Thames Region. [208429]
Mr. Woolas: The Environment Agency has contracted out craft work of a non-emergency nature. Craft posts required for emergency response at critical assets remain in-house.
The reasons for contracting out work include:
contractors are better able to use specialist craft skills;
reorganisation will provide better value and a more rational structure;
contractors do this work every day as it is their core business and are more likely to innovate;
Thames’ craft teams are generally small and there were difficulties recruiting and maintaining skills; and
long-term contractual arrangements provide more certainty about maintenance standards.
Thames region has largely been able to use current contractors to undertake the work which was previously undertaken in-house. The review has led to no forced redundancies.
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