Corporate report

CS EDI Expenditure Review Data

Published 29 May 2025

Context and caveats

The Civil Service Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Expenditure Review consisted of two phases conducted in, respectively, July-August 2023 and February-March 2024. Phase I was open to all departments and arm’s-length bodies who employ civil servants, and Phase II was targeted at the largest five departments for which one big arm’s-length body was included (see the section “Responding organisations”). 

Phase I of the Review consisted of three time periods for three different categories of costs to provide insight to “current” spend:

• EDI FTE at the time of the return (July 2023); 12-month costs were provided by organisations and analytically sense checked;
• Spend on EDI activities, departmental staff networks and cross-government staff networks for financial year 2022 - 2023;
• Costs of benchmarking and memberships of EDI organisations for the previous 12 months at the time of the return (July 2023).;

Phase II asked about the same costs as Phase I, but for the last four financial years, with 2023 - 2024 until 29 February 2024 because the questionnaire for Phase II was issued in March 2024 and departments couldn’t yet provide data until the end of the financial year. Additionally, Phase II asked about costs for “EDI awaydays” (see below for more information).

The data of the Review (Phase I and II) is based on the returns received from the EDI Expenditure Review surveys. We have relied on individual departments to ensure that their responses were accurate.

The review does not represent a picture of the EDI activity in “the whole public sector”, and it should not be reported as such. 

There are indirect or “embedded” costs that are not labelled EDI but do benefit EDI. Examples may include corporate EDI objectives of staff, a Mental Health First Aiders programme, or general anti-Bullying, Harassment and Discrimination campaigns. This could not be captured in this review.  

Responding organisations

Phase I of the Review attracted responses from 19 ministerial departments, 16 non-ministerial departments and 45 arm’s-length bodies which are considered to be part of the Civil Service. With one ministerial department reporting on 15 internal organisations, the responses represent a total number of 95 CS organisations. The responding organisations also reported the costs of 13 cross-government functions which deliver EDI for the benefit of the whole Civil Service; not solely the department they are hosted in. These cross-government function costs have been separated from the host organisations’ costs.

In February 2023, a Machinery of Government change took place. The newly formed departments submitted separate responses, but ensured that costs were not duplicated.

Phase II sought to seek total EDI spend capturing a majority of the workforce of the Civil Service represented by the five largest departments. These departments are:

• Department for Work and Pensions
• Home Office
• HM Revenue & Customs
• Ministry of Defence
• Ministry of Justice including HM Prison & Probation Service (HMPPS)

Arm’s-length bodies were excluded from Phase II apart from HMPPS, which was included because of its significant size. Phase II also excluded any cross-government functions that may be part of the departments.

Definitions

Definition of “EDI”

“EDI” was defined as internally focussed activities that benefit equality, diversity and inclusion within the workplace and workforce. Each organisation has designed and/or embedded EDI differently, and sometimes the lines between EDI and other HR areas are not as clear as the definition suggests. Organisations were asked to make informed decisions about what falls within “EDI” within their organisation, and what doesn’t. They received support from the Government People Group when required.

Definition of “EDI FTE”

“EDI FTE” was defined as roles expressed in “Full Time Equivalent” fully dedicated to the delivery of “Equality, Diversity and Inclusion”. This included, alongside “EDI”, variations in labels such as “D&I”, “Inclusive Practice” and “Inclusion”, and roles labelled in accordance with a diversity characteristic, such as Social Mobility lead, or Race Equality officer. Part-time roles were included, but FTE with only a small allocation to EDI was not included. Any role with broadly speaking between 70-100% allocation to “EDI” was included. Full-time roles split over multiple significant areas (e.g., 50% dedicated to EDI and 50% dedicated to another HR area) were encouraged to be reflected in the submitted FTE by reporting the part FTE dedicated to EDI (e.g., 0.5 FTE).

Definition of “EDI away days”

In Phase II, the responding organisations were asked about organisational spending on “EDI away days”, which had been defined as: “an event where the majority of the team/Unit is away from business as usual activities for at least half a day, to celebrate or come together to discuss EDI related matters. This is distinct from for instance standard business planning ‘away days’ where the focus is on budgets, resourcing, business planning; which may include EDI commentary, but not be the sole purpose of the event”.

Table 1: Breakdown of total spend on EDI, Phase I

Spend category	Time period	Costs
EDI FTE in organisations	Per annum at the time of the return	£18.3m
EDI FTE in cross-government functions	Per annum at the time of the return	£1.7m
EDI Activities in organisations	1 April ‘22 - 31 March ‘23	£4.9m
EDI Activities in cross-government functions	1 April ‘22 - 31 March ‘23	£0.7m
External benchmarking and memberships to EDI organisations	Past 12 months at the time of the return	£0.8m
Cross-government D&I staff networks	1 April ‘22 - 31 March ‘23	£0.2m
Departmental D&I staff networks	1 April ‘22 - 31 March ‘23	£0.5m
Total		£27.1m

*Rounded to the nearest £100,000

Table 2: Breakdown of spend on EDI Activities in organisations (1 April ’22 – 31 March ’23), Phase I

EDI Activity	Costs
Events including promotion materials	£476,000
Consultancy to advise by third party providers	£431,000
Learning and development	£3,484,000
Other costs on EDI activities	£515,000
Total	£4,905,000

*Rounded to the nearest £1,000

Table 3: Total “EDI FTE” in organisations and cross-government functions, Phase I

EDI FTE in organisations at the time of the return	350
EDI FTE in cross-government functions at the time of the return	30

*Rounded to the nearest 10 FTE for suppression

Table 4: “EDI FTE” in organisations broken down by grade (at the time of the return), Phase I

Grade	EDI FTE
AA/AO/EO grades or equivalent	40
HEO/SEO grades or equivalent	190
Grades 6 and 7 or equivalent	110
Senior Civil Servant	10
Total	350

*Rounded to the nearest 10 FTE for suppression

Table 5: Total number of departmental staff networks and committee members^{[footnote 1]}, Phase I

Departmental diversity staff networks	Committee members	Spend on departmental diversity staff networks
570	2,965	£534,000

*Rounded to the nearest 10 FTE for suppression
*Rounded to the nearest £1,000

To put the number of committee members into context, across all responding organisations approximately 0.62% of their total FTE are committee members.^{[footnote 2]}

Table 8: Total spend on EDI in five big departments (four years), Phase II

Category	April 2020 - March 2021	April 2021 - March 2022	April 2022 - March 2023	April 2023 - February 2024
EDI FTE	£7,521,000	£11,738,000	£13,008,000	£10,327,000
EDI Activities	£1,220,000	£2,697,000	£2,665,000	£2,133,000
Cross-government D&I staff networks	£50,000	£63,000	£74,000	£70,000
Departmental D&I staff networks	£21,000	£28,000	£90,000	£27,000
Benchmarking/ memberships	£310,000	£260,000	£282,000	£240,000
EDI awaydays	£0	£0	£0	£0
Total	£9,121,000	£14,785,000	£16,119,000	£12,797,000

*Rounded to the nearest £1,000

Table 9: Breakdown of spend on EDI Activities in five big departments (four years), Phase II

EDI activity	April 2020 - March 2021	April 2021 - March 2022	April 2022 - March 2023	April 2023 - February 2024
Events including promotion materials	£110,000	£63,000	£217,000	£210,000
Consultancy to advise by third party providers	£23,000	£294,000	£36,000	£66,000
Learning and development	£685,000	£2,192,000	£2,215,000	£1,589,000
Other costs on EDI activities	£402,000	£148,000	£197,000	£269,000
Total	£1,220,000	£2,697,000	£2,665,000	£2,133,000

*Rounded to the nearest £1,000

Table 10: Total EDI FTE (number and costs) in five big departments (four years), Phase II

Year	Total EDI FTE (end of FY)	Total EDI FTE Costs
2020/21	150	£7.5m
2021/22	200	£11.7m
2022/23	210	£13.0m
2023/24 up to 29 February[footnote 3]	170	£10.3m

*Rounded to the nearest 10 FTE and £100,000

Table 9: “EDI FTE” in five big departments broken down by grade (four years), Phase II^{[footnote 4]}

Grade	March 2021	March 2022	March 2023	February 2024
AA/AO/EO grades or equivalent	20	20	20	120
HEO/SEO grades or equivalent	90	110	110	90
Grades 6 and 7 or equivalent	40	60	70	50
Total	150	200	210	170

*Rounded to the nearest 10 FTE for suppression

1. Organisations were asked to report on the number of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion staff networks recognised in their organisations, and the total number of committee members of those networks. This excludes cross-government staff networks which are not located in one organisation.  ↩

2. This is an approximation based on the total FTE reported by organisations and is caveated by the fact that FTE is not the same as headcount. ↩

3. This row shows the figures for 11 months, no adjustment has been made ↩

4. The Senior Civil Servant FTE numbers have been suppressed due to having a low count. ↩