Official Statistics

Civilian personnel biannual diversity dashboard 1 October 2020: background sources and notes

Updated 10 December 2020

Data sources, quality and methods, Background notes, and additional supporting notes.

Introduction

The Diversity Dashboard contains figures on the proportion of MOD Main Civilian Personnel with specific protected characteristics. It complements the Biannual Civilian Personnel Report (BCPR) by providing greater detail about these characteristics.

Published in April 2012 for the first time, the creation of the Diversity Dashboard is to meet the Departments obligations under the Public Sector Equality Duty to provide information on its workforce in relation to the protected characteristics identified by the Equality Act 2010.

All Protected Characteristics are analysed and reported on against the relevant Minority grouping, defining Minority on a numeric basis as the smaller or smallest of two or more groups forming a whole, rather than any broader cultural or sociological definition relating to characteristics of groups.

For reported Protected Characteristics, the following elements form the numeric minority:

• Gender: Female
• Ethnicity: BAME
• Sexual Orientation: LGB
• Religion & Faith: Non Christian
• Disability Status: Disabled
• Work Status: Part-Time.

Please read further information relating to the Public Sector Equality Duty Act

To assist anyone who requires historical or additional data, Defence Statistics publishes Civilian and Armed Forces Personnel data via our website, Ministry of Defence: Statistics.

Symbols and Conventions

Symbols

• *not applicable (either numbers are not sufficiently robust or the declaration rate is less than 60%)
• II discontinuity in time series
• ~ fewer than five
• .. not available
• – zero or rounded to zero.

Italic figures are used for percentages and other rates, except where otherwise indicated. All percentages are calculated from headcount totals (part time equivalent to one person), from unrounded figures and are shown to 1 decimal place.

Rounding

Where rounding has been used, totals and sub-totals have been rounded separately and so may not equal the sums of their rounded parts. When rounding to the nearest 10, numbers ending in “5” have been rounded to the nearest multiple of 20 to prevent systematic bias.

Data sources, quality and methods

All figures presented in tables in this publication meet the standards of quality and integrity demanded by the Code of Practice for Official Statistics. Where figures do not meet the standard they are deleted and shown in the table by the symbol “*”.

Data for MOD Main civilian personnel are taken from the personnel system - Human Resources Management System (HRMS) and are shown on a Headcount basis.

Civilian data on HRMS are a combination of fields mandated by Defence Business Services (DBS) organisation formerly the People Pay and Pensions Agency (PPPA) such as grade, with voluntary fields such as disability status or ethnicity. Civilian personnel complete these fields based on their self-perceptions, but are under no obligation to complete these fields. It is not possible for DASA to assess the accuracy or consistency of the declarations made by individuals within these fields.

Due to the HRMS reset of the disability field on 18 April 2011 to accommodate the new disability reporting requirements, insufficient numbers of personnel have made disability declarations to be able to report disability representation with any validity from July 2011 to October 2018 (declaration rate below 60 per cent). DS (Civilian) worked with diversity policy colleagues to encourage people to complete their diversity records. (People still had the option to positively opt-out of providing details by selecting ‘Choose not to declare’). The declaration rate in January 2019 rose above 60 per cent, allowing the representation rate to be reported on.

A breakdown by grade band and age is not presented for religion as the comparison shown is not between a minority and majority group. The 3-way comparison between Christian, non-Christian and Secular beliefs would fragment the data too much to be meaningful or statistically viable in a tabular format. All ages quoted in this publication are based on ‘age at last Birthday’. Ages are derived by the formula ‘situation date (for strengths) minus date of birth’.

Background Notes

Structural changes to the Top Level Budget areas have occurred during the time-series covered by this publication. In some cases this means that figures are not directly comparable across the whole period. To aid understanding of these changes and how they have impacted upon the figures the detail of these changes is provided here:

• Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) has been reported as a Bespoke Trading Entity since 01 July 2015. Due to the size and makeup of DE&S, its removal from MOD main had an impact on a number of diversity measures (an increase or decrease which was inconsistent with previous time series data. To allow a direct comparison of data from April 2014 to April 2018, DE&S data has been removed for April 2015.

• this publication includes four diversity data tables that were previously in ‘Statistical Series 2 – Personnel Bulletin 2.02 – Civilian Personnel’. This publication ceased after 2015 following Secretary of State approval and public consultation. These tables provide information on grade by different diversity variables. The following notes apply:

a) Grade equivalent is shown in terms of the broader banding structure and is based on paid grade. Senior Civil Service totals include personnel outside the Senior Civil Service but of equivalent grade, primarily Senior Medical Specialist and Fee Paid consultants.

b) Declaration rates are based on all known positive declarations, excluding those who select “choose not to declare” or have not responded.

• following changes to Industrial & Non-Industrial marker for some personnel in April 2019 data, minor changes have been made to previously reported values in table 5.2 (Disability declaration rate of MOD Main civilian personnel by grade), table 5.3 (Disability status of MOD Main civilian personnel by grade), table 6.1 (Full-Time/Part-Time representation of MOD Main civilian personnel by grade), and annex table 2A (MOD Main civilian personnel by Ethnicity and Grade).

Further Information

Contact Us

Defence Statistics welcome feedback on our statistical products. If you have any comments or questions about this publication or about our statistics in general, you can contact us as follows:

Defence Statistics (Civilian Personnel)
Email: [email protected]

If you require information which is not available within this or other available publications, you may wish to submit a Request for Information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to the Ministry of Defence. For more information, see:

The Freedom of Information Act

Other contact points within Defence Statistics are:

Contact Point	Telephone	Email address
Defence Expenditure Analysis	030 6793 4531	[email protected]
Price Indices	030 6793 2100	[email protected]
Naval Service Manpower	023 9254 7426	[email protected]
Army Manpower	01264 886175	[email protected]
RAF Manpower	01494 496822	[email protected]
Tri-Service Manpower	020 7807 8896	[email protected]
Civilian Manpower	020 7218 4535	[email protected]
Health Information	030 6798 4423	[email protected]

If you wish to correspond by mail, our postal address is:

Defence Statistics (Civilian Personnel)
Ministry of Defence, Main Building
Floor 3 Zone M
Whitehall
London
SW1A 2HB

For general MOD enquiries, please call: 020 7218 9000

Glossary

Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) BAME is now the widely used terminology, as a collective descriptor for non-white citizens, across Whitehall, other public sector bodies and the third sector, as well as among civil service race staff networks and their cross-Whitehall umbrella body, the Civil Service Race Forum. See also Ethnic Origin

Broader Banded Grade: Defence Statistics report personnel against their equivalence within the broader banded structure; SCS to E2 for non industrials and Skill Zones 1 to 4, Industrial Firemen and Apprentices for industrial personnel. Broader banded grading applies equivalence for all non harmonised grade codes. This includes personnel in retained grade structures, (such as Lecturers) and personnel employed in analogue grade bands (such as civilian nurses employed against NHS grade codes), who have their own delegated pay schemes outside of the MOD National and London pay scales.

Christian includes personnel who self identify their religion as any Christian denomination or following a religion which follows a Christian tradition.

Ethnic Origin is the ethnic grouping to which a person has indicated that they belong. The classifications used were revised for the 2001 Census of Population when a classification of nationality was also collected. These revised definitions were also used to re-survey members of the Armed Forces and the Civil Service in 2001-02, see Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic.

Full-time: Full-time civil servants are those working 37 hours a week (36 hours in London), excluding meal breaks.

Industrial: Industrial personnel are civilian personnel employed primarily in a trade, craft or other manual labour occupation. This covers a wide range of work such as industrial technicians, air freight handlers, storekeepers, vergers and drivers.

Lesbian, Gay & Bisexual (LGB): Lesbian, Gay & Bisexual (LGB): the term referring to those who self-identify their sexual orientation as being other than Heterosexual, including, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and other orientations. Transgender people may or may not identify as one of these orientations.

Ministry of Defence (MOD): This United Kingdom Government department is responsible for implementation of government defence policy and is the headquarters of the British Armed Forces. The principal objective of the MOD is to protect the United Kingdom and its values and interests abroad. The MOD manages day to day running of the Armed Forces, contingency planning and defence procurement.

Non-Christian includes all personnel who self identify their religion, belief or faith as any which is not Christian. This includes those who have self identified as Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Kirati, Muslim, Sikh or any other religious belief which is not Christian.

Non-industrial: Civilian personnel who are not primarily employed in a trade, craft or other manual labour occupation. This covers a wide range of personnel undertaking work such as administration, analysis, policy, procurement, finance, medical, dental, teaching, policing, science and engineering.

Part-time: Part-time civil servants are those working fewer than 37 hours a week (36 hours in London), excluding meal breaks.

Secular includes personnel who have self identified as having no religion or any other beliefs (for example, humanist)