Breakdown of DWP Legal Services

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Dear Department for Work and Pensions,

I would be very grateful if you could clarify the following information relating to personnel employed by the Department for Work and Pensions who work out of Caxton House in your legal department; headed, I understand, by Naomi Mallick - Director of DWP Legal Services.

The information I request is as follows and should fall within your cost limit.

(1) Please clarify how many staff are based at Caxton House (with your legal services department) as solicitors, barristers, or other legally qualified staff?

(2) Please provide a breakdown of communication channels, staffing or organisational structure, of the legal department and confirm how communications are recorded or documented when communications take place between the legal department and Department for Work and Pensions Ministers?

(3) Please clarify whether, within the Department for Work and Pensions legal department, there are specific personnel who deal with particular project/policy related duties. By this I mean do Department for Work and Pensions legal staff specifically work on legal matters pertaining to (a) Universal Credit (b) Personal Independence Payments, and (c) Employment & Support Allowance? If so is any particular individual in charge of the project work?

(4) Please provide a generalised breakdown of the staff of the legal department with a description of their duties. For example, would certain staff work on (a) drafting legislation, (b) attending social security committees, (c) attending court & tribunals, (d) dealing with contested FOI requests, (e) compiling responses to other other departments and government agencies such as the Department for Health, Her Majesty's Judiciary & Coroner, and (f) drawing up contracts for private contracts?

(5) Please indicate how many staff are employed full and part-time and provide names where public disclosure requires you to do so?

I look forward to hearing from you with the requested information.

Thank you for your assistance in this matter.

Yours faithfully,

Nick Dilworth

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References

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1. http://www.dwp.gov.uk/freedom-of-informa...

DWP CAXTON HOUSE EXTERNAL HR, Department for Work and Pensions

1 Attachment

Please see response to your Freedom of Information request.

DWP HR Central Freedom of Information Team

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Dear DWP CAXTON HOUSE EXTERNAL HR,

Thank you for your reply of the 7th June 2017.

I have made a new request to the relevant department as per your response. I am puzzled as to why you were unable to provide this information.

As per this response, could you please clarify:

Is any part of the DWP Legal Services Department situated within Caxton House?

A simple yes or no will suffice.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,

Nick Dilworth

Martyn Dewar left an annotation ()

Hi Nick,

You might be interested in this response that Doug Paulley got from the former Treasury Solicitor's department (which morphed into GLD) a few years back [1] - the excel sheet has a breakdown of staff by location (which confirms the DWP staff were in Caxton House).

Obviously it's a quite old dataset now, but, there's a moderately newer one you could compare with on the Governmnt Legal Department's organogram [2] - choose "Director General - Legal, Directorate B" and then "Director - Legal, Department for Work and Pensions Legal Services".

The latter dataset gives a better idea of the role splits, but, of course, doesn't list names of non Senior civil servants - it could be possible to use the data from both to get a clearer idea of that though…

[1] https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/i...

[2] https://data.gov.uk/organogram/governmen...

DWP HR PQ & FOI Focal Point, Department for Work and Pensions

1 Attachment

Dear Mr Dilworth,

Attached is our response to your Freedom of Information request.

DWP Freedom of Information

Dear DWP CAXTON HOUSE EXTERNAL HR,

Thank you for your reply of the 7th June 2017.

I have made a new request to the relevant department as per your response. I am puzzled as to why you were unable to provide this information.

As per this response, could you please clarify:

Is any part of the DWP Legal Services Department situated within Caxton House?

A simple yes or no will suffice.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,

Nick Dilworth

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