Civil service numbers at 20-year high despite pledge to cut costs

Times

5 days ago

The civil service is becoming increasingly top-heavy as thousands of staff are hired despite a pledge to cut costs.
There were 549,660 civil servants at the end of March. This is up almost 7,000 on the same time last year, putting the size of Whitehall at a 20-year high.
The civil service has now grown by a third since Brexit and pay rose 5 per cent last year. Critics say staff are 'over-promoted' as a way of boosting salaries.
The latest figures show 75 per cent of staff are in management roles and above, compared with 60 per cent a decade ago. Civil service middle management, known as grades 6 and 7, grew 5 per cent last year after doubling over the previous decade. Growth in the top ranks of Whitehall also accelerated, up 3.2 per cent last year.
'It is a continuation of the grade inflation story', said Alex Thomas, programme director at the Institute for Government, an independent think tank.
'Every grade except [the lowest] administrative grade grew last year.'
While pay at each rank of the service has fallen significantly in real terms, the overall pay bill is now higher than it was in 2010 as staff become more senior.
After coalition-era cuts, the civil service fell to a low of 418,340 in 2016 before beginning to rise again as government took on more responsibility as a result of Brexit. The Conservatives made a series of pledges to cut the civil service after the Covid pandemic but it has continued to grow every year.
Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, has promised to cut costs by 15 per cent, although she has not set a target on staff numbers. Thomas said it was too soon to know if that pledge was working, but said a fall in the number of staff moving between departments suggested the civil service was 'gumming up'.
'Less churn is a good thing but it's not clear whether people are staying in their jobs to become more expert — more likely it's a response to recruitment freezes,' he said.
The figures do show, however, that the civil service is becoming more diverse. Women now make up 49 per cent of the senior civil service. A record 18 per cent of civil servants are from ethnic minorities, up from 11 per cent a decade ago, while the proportion of disabled staff has doubled to 18 per cent.
Alex Burghart, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, said the rise in numbers was 'the direct result of Labour's failure to act. We set out plans to reduce the size of the civil service to pre-pandemic levels, plans which would have saved £1 billion a year, but Labour scrapped these after taking office and since then have only worsened the problem with their continual surrender to the unions, and their creation of 41 new quangos.'
A government spokesman said: 'These increases are driven by operational frontline roles. We have set out plans to reduce back office costs by 15 per cent over the next five years, delivering savings of over £2 billion a year by 2030 and targeting spending on frontline services.
'We have already announced a new cross-government fund for exit schemes to reduce staffing numbers over the next two years, as well as introducing measures to make it quicker and easier to remove poor performers from post.'