Department for Communities and Local Government loses one in ten staff over three months

Civil service also sees 10% fall in number of temporary staff, according to the latest ONS stats


By Suzannah Brecknell

20 Sep 2016

The Department for Communities and Local Government reduced its headcount by 14% between March and June 2016, meaning it lost proportionally more staff than any other department over that period.

According to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics, the department lost 240 staff in the three month period, bringing its total headcount to 1460 in June.

The business and energy departments – now merged into the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Skills – also saw large falls in staff numbers over the three months before they were abolished. Headcount in these departments fell by 7% and 8% respectively.


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The largest absolute falls in headcount were at the Department for Work and Pensions –which lost 490 staff, and the Home Office, which lost 430 staff.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which had seen the largest fall in headcount over the first three months of 2016, remained the same size from March to June.

The civil service employed 416,000 people in June 2016, a decrease of 3,000 (0.7%) since March 2016 and 9,000 (2.1%) since June 2015.

This means the service is now smaller than at any point since ONS began recording these statistics in 1999 – the highest point was in 2005 when the civil service employed 566,000 people.

The civil service is also employing less temporary staff, with a fall of 430 people – or 10% — from March to June 2016.

Overall, central government employment has grown very slightly thanks to the continued academy schools programme, and a growth in NHS headcount.

In June 2016 2.95m people were employed by central government, a 1.8% increase since June 2015. This is the highest level of employment since the ONS’ series began in March 1999.

Local government employment, in contrast, is now at its lowest level since 1999, having fallen by 72,000, or 3.2%, from June 2015 to June 2016.

Academisation, which sees schools move out of local authority control, was a significant factor in this fall, with 36,000 people moving from local to central government employment in the last year.

Total public sector employment was 5.33m in June 2016, a fall of 0.4% since June 2016, and 16.2% lower than the peak of public sector employment in September 2009.

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