Nearly 1,650 DWP staff have been issued with formal performance warnings after exceeding sickness absence limits, new figures that have sparked fury reveal.
The disclosure comes amid scrutiny of attendance levels inside the Whitehall department responsible for administering benefits and supporting people back into work.
In a written Parliamentary answer, ministers confirmed that 1,649 formal performance warnings were issued in just one year to staff whose sickness absence exceeded departmental triggers. Now demands are being made for urgent action.
The Department admitted it cannot confirm whether every warning was issued specifically because of excessive sickness, citing the way its data is recorded.
The figures were revealed after a question from Neil O’Brien, the Conservative MP for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston, who asked how many working days were being lost to sickness across the Department and its agencies.
Responding for Labour, Andrew Western, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, said the Department’s sickness absence data is published annually by the Cabinet Office and covers average working days lost per full-time equivalent member of staff.
The minister said the most recent published data is for the year ending March 31, 2025, which is when the last Conservative government was in power.
He said: “In the past year, 1,649 formal performance warnings were issued to staff whose absences exceeded departmental triggers. However, because of the way data are recorded, the Department cannot confirm whether in each case the warning was specifically due to absences exceeding those triggers.
“As of November 2025, the total DWP headcount stands at 95,164.”
The Department confirmed it has one executive agency, Skills England, but said sickness absence figures for that body are not included in DWP totals because its HR functions are provided by the Department for Education.
The revelation is likely to fuel criticism over productivity in the public sector at a time when ministers are urging more people to return to work and warning that sickness and inactivity are placing a growing strain on the welfare system.
DWP sickness absence data is published as part of the Cabinet Office’s annual workforce statistics.
John O’Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: “These figures suggest a worrying culture of absence in one of the biggest departments in Whitehall.
“When more than a thousand staff are triggering formal warnings, taxpayers are entitled to ask whether the DWP is being properly managed.
“The department should tighten its attendance controls, improve its data systems and make sure staff are actually delivering for claimants, rather than allowing poor performance to be hidden behind sloppy record-keeping.”
