A 2.5% uplift to the senior civil service paybill and the introduction of pay progression were the headline measures from the government’s response to the Senior Salaries Review Body’s 2026 report.
But further reading of the 196-page document shines a light on a host of other fascinating – and troubling – issues affecting pay and reward for senior officials. Here are five things we’ve learned.
Being promoted to the SCS isn’t worth it for some officials
The SSRB said levels of pay for the senior civil service have fallen behind “comparator groups” in both the public and private sectors, which is “particularly challenging” for recruitment at the SCS pay band 1 and SCS pay band 2 levels.
According to the 2026 report, "many” civil servants in delegated grades – rank-and-file officials – told the SSRB they don’t consider promotion to the SCS to be “an attractive, or even viable, option” for their career because they already get better pay than they would in SCS pay band 1.
The pay floor for SCS pay band 1 is due to rise to £86,000 this year as a result of ministers’ acceptance of the SSRB’s recommendations. The floor for SCS pay band 2 will rise to £105,000.
The SSRB said 22.3% of grade 6 staff – a senior management rank below SCS level – currently earn more than the 2025-26 SCS pay band 1 minima of £81,000, while 8.1% earn more than the £86,000 level the pay band will soon rise to. According to the SSRB, the issue is “even more acute” in Scotland where officials at grades C2 and C3 “often have an effective hourly rate that is much higher than those in the SCS”.
In addition to the “overlap” between what some delegated grades can earn and the SCS pay band 1 minima, the SSRB said other disincentives for promotion included less favourable workloads, and levels of responsibility and “exposure” viewed as “out of alignment” with the salary on offer.
Promotion-seekers resort to ‘pay tourism’ to secure a better salary
“Pay on promotion” policy in the civil service means that existing officials cannot negotiate their starting salary in the SCS – and instead get either the bottom rate for their new pay band or a 10% uplift on their current salary. However, the SSRB flags a workaround that enterprising officials employ: pay tourism.
Pay on promotion does not apply to external candidates for SCS roles, meaning they “can and often do” negotiate markedly higher salaries than candidates from delegated grades within the civil service could dream of.
The SSRB describes “pay tourism” as the practice of leaving the civil service and returning as an external candidate in order to be able to negotiate a higher salary. It says pay tourism is “prevalent” and a source of resentment among colleagues in similar roles who earn much less because they were internal candidates.
Although it depicts the phenomenon as widespread, the SSRB’s 2026 report shows the vast majority of appointments to the SCS were internal promotions from delegated grades in 2024-25.
Of 845 “new entrants” to the SCS in that financial year, approximately 79% were promoted internally from delegated grades, 11% were appointed from the private sector and 10% were appointed from the wider public sector.
Average pay in the SCS has fallen by 13% in real terms since 2015
The SSRB report says that the SCS has “grown without intention or coordination” in recent years, with stakeholders reporting that “the larger size has not been accompanied by corresponding increases in outputs”.
The report states that the SCS paybill has grown almost 60% in real terms since 2015 while headcount has increased by 71%. The SSRB says that funding uplift “could be better spent on addressing some of the long-standing challenges within the SCS”, such as making sure the workforce is the right size to “enable a leaner, better-paid SCS in pursuit of a clear vision and purpose”.
The SSRB says that despite the 60% increase in paybill since 2015, the real-terms value of average full-time-equivalent pay in the SCS has fallen by 13%.
Churn reduces... slightly
In 2024-25, approximately 18% of the SCS either left or changed roles, down from roughly 20% in 2023-24. The SSRB said the 18% figure breaks down to 10.2% who departed the SCS, including because they retired or returned to a more junior role following a promotion. Of the remainder, 3.9% of movers went to a different department, while 3.7% took a new role in the same department.
The overarching churn rate masks areas of particular challenge and the SSRB report suggests that some parts of the SCS have staff-turnover rates in excess of 30%.
Areas where churn is particularly high include digital, data and technology roles, with 13.9% of officials leaving the civil service entirely in 2024-25 and 17.3% moving to a new department; finance (13.7% and 17.7% respectively); and human resources (12.0% and 19.0%).
Exit interviews are conducted with departing members of the SCS, which results in a raft of HR information including a verdict on whether a leaver is a “regrettable loss” – a valuable employee that an organisation would prefer to have kept.
The SSRB said that 60% of departures from the SCS were described as regrettable losses in 2024-25, down from 83% the previous year and 72% in 2022-23. Acknowledged the direction of travel over the past 12 months, the review body said: “Outflow continues to include higher-quality members of the SCS – although in reduced volumes than in previous years.”
AI is applying for work in a department near you
Civil servants of all grades will be only too aware of expectations that artificial intelligence is going to transform the nature of work over the coming years. Many may reasonably wonder whether their role will become surplus to requirements. However, the SSRB has anecdotal evidence that AI is actively seeking top jobs in departments already.
According to a crunch of data on SCS jobs that have been the subject of a competition chaired by the Civil Service Commission, the number of applications for each individual position has increased by 35% since 2023-24.
“This appears, in part, to be driven by an increasing number of AI-generated applications that are not of the calibre expected for SCS roles or ‘quick applications’ from individuals who are not sufficiently qualified or experienced,” the SSRB report says.
According to the report, there were 166 commissioner-chaired competitions in 2024-25. Of those all but 12 resulted in an appointment being made.