Reforming the civil service

Approximate read time: 5 minutes 

The government has announced a range of civil service reforms as part of its plans to reduce public spending and to deliver its mission-led agenda. In early March 2025, Cabinet Office Minister Pat McFadden told the BBC the government had “radical” plans to reform the civil service and that it “would and can” be smaller in terms of headcount.^[1] Mr McFadden did not set out a specific target for reducing the headcount. However, he said there would be greater use of performance-related pay for senior staff and improved performance management across the civil service, with fast-track exits for poor performers. On 10 April 2025, it was reported that the Cabinet Office would cut or move 2,100 jobs, about a third of its workforce. Mr McFadden said he was “leading by example” in making cuts to his own department.^[2]

Prior to the spring statement, the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, told Sky News that the government wanted to reduce the total civil service headcount by 10,000.^[3] She said there had been “big increases” in civil servant numbers in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, but it was “not right that we just keep those numbers there forever”.

Figures from the Cabinet Office showed that in 2024 the total civil service headcount was approximately 543,000.^[4] In 2010, the total headcount was 527,000. The headcount declined under the 2010 to 2015 coalition government, in response to its demands for public spending reductions. In 2012, the coalition government published a ‘civil service reform plan’ that said the service would become “smaller and more strategic”.^[5] This would be achieved by initiatives such as improving digital delivery of services, sharing back-office functions, and reducing the number of non-departmental public bodies.^[6] The headcount had reduced to 418,000 by 2016, but subsequently it has steadily increased.

Figure 1. UK civil service headcount, 2008 to 2024

In the spring statement on 26 March 2025, the chancellor announced a range of civil service reforms. These included a £3.25bn “transformation fund” to reform public services by seizing the “opportunities of digital technology and artificial intelligence”.^[7] Of that fund, £150mn would be allocated for “government employee exit schemes”. The Treasury said the exit schemes would create a “leaner and more efficient civil service”. It said the administration costs of the civil service would be reduced by 15% by 2030 and that “savings on back-office functions” would total £2.2bn over the same period.^[8] The spring statement also said the government would reform civil service performance and accountability to “enable and incentivise delivery, including reforms to performance management, recruitment, reward and training”.

The union Prospect, which represents civil servants, welcomed the commitment to invest in the digital skills of the civil service. However, it said the skills agenda risked being “overtaken” by the “blunt target” of budget cuts.^[9] It said the aim of reform should not just be to create a “cheaper civil service”.

The FDA union, which represents senior civil servants, said it was “not afraid of reform, but reform must have substance”.^[10] The FDA also criticised the government for not consulting with the union before announcing its reform agenda.^[11] It said the government should set out its priorities for service delivery, rather than retreading “failed ideas and narratives” and announcing a “new performance management process for civil servants every month”.

The Institute for Government (IfG) think tank has broadly welcomed the government’s reform proposals. Alex Thomas, IfG programme director, has argued that budget and staff cuts must be a “spur for reform” within the civil service.^[12] However, Mr Thomas said the government should avoid having specific headcount targets. He said that a reduction of 10,000 employees would be “tiny” compared to the total size of the civil service. He also claimed that achieving the intended civil service budget reductions only from reforms to back-office functions was a “fiction”. He said there were “nowhere near enough” people working in back-office roles—such as human resources, communications, and policy advice—to achieve the savings. In any case, Mr Thomas argued it would be “wrong” to exclude front-line services from reform, because that was where there was the most potential for technology to create efficiencies.

Alex Thomas has also called for civil service performance to be improved by using compulsory redundancies.^[13] He said that even the civil service’s “stoutest defenders” acknowledge it is “not very good at performance management” and he claimed it was “near-impossible to actually dismiss anyone” for underperformance. He argued the civil service should introduce “compulsory, regular, predictable and well-managed redundancy rounds”. These would not be an “Elon Musk-style sacking frenzy”, but a means of “shedding a relatively small number” of the lowest performing staff. Compulsory redundancies would “drive efficiency in the system” and would show that the civil service “means business when improving its own performance”.

Patrick Diamond, professor of public policy at Queen Mary, University of London, responded to the government’s reform proposals by arguing that its mission-led strategy would be difficult to achieve unless it was willing to reform the concept of ministerial responsibility.^[14] He claimed that if the government was serious about achieving its missions, it would have to “confront the fundamental question of the constitutional relationship between ministers and civil servants”. He said this was something that “successive governments have avoided” since the 1960s. Professor Diamond argued that senior civil servants should be held accountable for service delivery, as they are for example in New Zealand.^[15] However, he claimed this would require the “doctrine of ministerial responsibility to be overhauled”. He said ministerial responsibility was an “unhelpful façade” that should have been “dismantled a long time ago”.

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Cover image by Can Pac Swire on Flickr.