Home Office: Ministers' Private Offices
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the average staffing complement is for a ministerial private office within their Department; what grades those staff are appointed at; what the typical remuneration and contracted working hours are for those posts; and what the staff turnover rate is.
Answered by Sarah Jones
Ministerial private offices in the Home Office have a mean of 6 staff members, at grades ranging from Executive Officer to Grade 6 (excluding the Principal Private Secretary and one other member of staff, who are Senior Civil Servants). Staff are contracted between 36 and 37 hours per week depending on their terms and conditions, and their base remuneration is on this basis. An additional allowance is paid in recognition of the expectation that private office staff face additional and out of hours demands. The most recent publication of Home Office salaries (December 2024) lists the salary bands for these grades as:
Grade | Salary minimum | Salary maximum | Private Office allowance |
Executive Officer | £30,000 | £35,700 | £5,000 |
Higher Executive Officer | £37,300 | £44,191 | £6,000 |
Senior Executive Officer | £44,720 | £52,130 | £7,000 |
Grade 7 | £60,300 | £70,730 | £9,000 |
Grade 6 | £73,900 | £85,690 | £10,000 |
Pay bands for the Senior Civil Service are centrally determined.
Staff turnover for calendar year 2025 was 68%.
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