More than 10,000 UK civil service jobs to be cut

10 comments

1. Are they cutting the number **OF** civil servants, or the numbers of people **IN** the civil service or the **COST** of the civil service because that’s three totally different things and objectives.

   Many of our departments rely heavily on contracted staff because we cant recruit or attract people to fill posts. Those contractors cost 2-3x times what a CS would cost in that same post. So if you were able to replace those contractors with permanent CS you would save a lot of money.

   But if the aim is just numbers then you can do a lot of spreadsheet wizardry and just move the contract staff from the “staff” column to “resources” column and magically you have reduced staff numbers. But then you have to keep employing contractors for any roles, at that inflated cost.

   Or you move large numbers of CS to newly formed non departmental gov bodies or quangos. Thus reducing the number of CS on paper by calling them something else.

   As a CS myself i 100% agree that the civil service needs root and branch reform to make it fit for the modern age. We are trying to do 21st century work with 1990’s management mentality and systems. Just playing with staffing numbers and doing everything possible to aggravate the work force doesn’t achieve that.

2. Labour being more conservative than the fake conservative party. No wonder over half their voters abandoned them.

3. Most of this will be voluntary redundancies, early retirements and not renewing contractors.

4. Probably won’t make any difference to productivity

5. We have something like 550000 people working in the civil service from a quick Google.

   It feels such a high number for all aspects of the UK to be so totally broken. Assuming this article is correct we have kept reducing numbers but with advent of computer and automation I wonder how well that’s keep pace with comparable reductions in private sector.

   https://www.civilservant.org.uk/information-numbers.html

6. > Greater use of AI in tasks such as drafting correspondence and taking minutes of meetings would reduce the need for some administrative staff, Whitehall figures said.

   Presumably not figures who have ever actually used AI, which would almost certainly increase the time taken for either of these tasks. In reality, anybody with any sense can see that cutting CS numbers will mainly be accounted for by doing less with the Cs.

   With that said, the article isn’t totally clear about how the 10,000 figure was reached, with the government saying numbers will not be explicitly capped. I imagine a lot of teams will incorporate budget cuts by reducing delivery budgets and scale, but still needing the same number of civil servants to manage the programme – there is not always a linear relationship between scale of budget and number of staff required.

7. > The Civil Service needs “innovators and disrupters”, a Cabinet minister said as he called for it to follow the “test and learn” approach of tech firms and start-ups.

   Juxtapose that story from 2 days ago with this story cutting 10,000 staff today, and projections yesterday that civil service wages will rise by less than 3% next year.

   Politicians need to decide what they actually want from the CS and find it accordingly.

8. Anyone who’s got civil servant or even public sector work experience can tell you about the absolute state of productivity in those areas.

   It’s beyond dire and SOME people (granted not all) are far too comfortable never changing their way of work or doing absolutely anything above the bare minimum they can possibly get away with.

   You could probably cut staff numbers by 50% increase the remaining staff members salary by 25% and start being much more selective with the hiring and firing process and still actually gain productivity and efficiency.

9. Cut 10,000 jobs, offer 3% pay rises to fall behind the private sector, cut the other perks slowly as well.

   Why doesn’t anything in Britain work anymore?

10. But just to be clear, mps subsidised food, alcohol and second home expenses will remain.

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