This morning’s announcement of a series of major reforms to the civil service has dominated headlines this morning. But how much of the announcements are new?
The number of London-based civil servants will reduce by 12,000 by 2030
The biggest announcement of the lot says ministers will cut the number of civil servants working in the capital from 95,000 FTE staff to 83,000 by 2030. The Cabinet Office confirmed to CSW that this figure is separate to the goal to move “thousands” of civil service jobs to the regions (below). We can therefore expect job cuts to account for at least some of the jobs disappearing from London.
The latest public data on civil service numbers, from the 2024 Civil Service Statistics release, showed there were 102,500 FTE staff in London as of March 2024. This suggests there has been a significant drop in the last year to the current 95,000 the government is quoting.
The planned reduction to 83,000 would put the London FTE workforce size at its lowest since 2018, when there were around 80,000 civil servants in the capital.
...and "thousands" of jobs will be relocated to the regions
The announcement says “thousands” of civil service jobs will be relocated to 13 towns and cities across the country: Aberdeen, Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Darlington, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Greater Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle and Tyneside, Sheffield and York.
A Cabinet Office spokesperson said the number of jobs being moved will be decided as part of the upcoming Spending Review. Cabinet Office minister Pat McFadden has written to departments asking them to set out how many roles they can move out of London.
The spokesperson confirmed that the new push comes on top of the 2020 Places for Growth target to relocate 22,000 civil service jobs out of London, which was met last year.
11 central London offices will close
The announcement says the closure of 11 buildings will save £94m per year. It names three offices: 102 Petty France, the headquarters of the Ministry of Justice, the Government Legal Department, Crown Prosecution Service and HM Courts and Tribunals Service; the Department for Work and Pensions’ Caxton House site; and the Department of Health and Social Care’s HQ on Victoria Street.
The DHSC closure appears to be the only part of this plan that has not yet been announced.
Plans to shut Caxton House in 2026 and 102 Petty France in 2028 were confirmed in the Government Property Agency's latest business plan, published in December.
The closures are part of the GPA's existing plan to reduce the Whitehall estate to 16 buildings – by closing 20 – set out in the Government Property Strategy 2022-30. Closures that have happened since the strategy was published in 2022 include Windsor House and Albany House, which closed in September and November 2024 respectively.
DHSC's Victoria Street site appears to be among those buildings set for closure under the property strategy.
Half of senior civil service roles will be based outside London by 2030
The reform plan promises to locate 50% of UK-based senior civil servants in regional offices by 2030. This is well-trodden ground, having been part of the Places for Growth programme.
The latest published data for the PfG programme – which is for Q4 of 2023 – showed that 31.4% of SCS roles were at that time based outside London, compared to 24.8% in the same quarter of 2020, when the programme was launched.
Half of Fast Stream roles will be based outside London by 2030
The announcement outlines a "new ambition" for the Fast Stream programme to have 50% of placements offered outside of London by 2030, "making it increasingly possible for future leaders and managers to progress in their careers without ever needing to work in the capital".
This target does not appear to have been announced before – but it seems there may not be far to go to achieve this goal. The Cabinet Office does not publish statistics about Fast Stream locations, but this blog post from September 2019 by Civil Service HR's deputy director for Fast Stream and early talent said 50% of roles were based outside London that year.
A new digital and AI campus in Manchester
The press release about the reforms says plans for the digital campus are not new, referring to existing plans to develop a new building in Ancoats in Manchester with the potential to host 7,000 civil servants in the city region. It says the new campus will "harness the city’s reputation as a global digital hub".
The GPA secured land for the digital campus in May last year, having expressed interest in the site in 2022. Detailed plans for the site were made public last August before the project was given the go-ahead by the local council in February.
A new energy campus in Aberdeen
The announcement says a "new government campus" will be created around the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero's second headquarters and the new HQ for Great British Energy. In April last year, DESNZ said there were more than 100 staff working at DESNZ's Aberdeen site, and that this number would increase by around a third by March 2027.
Today, the government said both the Manchester and Aberdeen campuses "will partner with local government and universities to deliver the government’s missions, improve the talent pipeline into government and boost growth and opportunity".
A new ‘Career Launch Apprenticeship’ programme
The new apprenticeship scheme will open for applications this summer, with courses starting in 2026, according to today's announcement. The Level 3 Business Administrator apprenticeship programme will train up future civil servants based in Birmingham and Manchester, as well as London.
This particular scheme does not appear to have been announced before, though there are a number of civil service apprenticeship schemes already up and running. The most recent apprenticeships strategy, published in 2022, set a target for one in 20 civil servants to be an apprentice by this year.
A new secondment scheme with local government
Today's announcement promises a new secondment scheme, to be developed and launched in partnership with the Local Government Association. It will see civil servants "placed directly with local authorities, building links within regions, and ensuring those delivering policy, experience first hand the work of local government and the services they provide".
The scheme appears to be the same one announced in the English devolution white paper in December. The white paper said the government would “provide a comprehensive offer” to support new strategic authorities, including introducing a secondment scheme with central government. This would include “facilitating the placement of civil servants in strategic authority officer roles, including senior positions”, it said.