The civil service headcount has risen to 524,000, making it the biggest workforce since 2005.
The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics, published on Thursday, show the full-time equivalent headcount has gone up from 521,000 in December 2025 to 524,000 as of March 2026.
This makes it the highest count since December 2005, when the ONS recorded that there were 525,000 civil servants.
An “all staff” crunch of the figures, not adjusted for full-time equivalence, shows civil service headcount hit 558,000 in March 2026, also the highest since 2005.
The numbers include officials working for the Welsh Government, the Scottish Government and temporary staff.
The figures are still a few thousand off the highest recorded figures since the ONS started collecting the quarterly data in March 1999:
The highest FTE headcount was the 534,000 recorded in March, June and September 2004.
For non-adjusted headcount, the highest was the 566,000 recorded in September 2004 and June 2005
The civil service’s ranks have increased every year since 2016 following the coalition government's austerity-driven attempts to rein in numbers. Since then, growth has been driven by the demands of the UK’s decision to leave the EU and the need to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic, while various drives to reduce the overall size of the civil service have failed.
It has continued – albeit slowly – to increase under Labour, rising from 513,000 in June 2024 to 524,000 in March 2026.
The bulk of the increase in this quarter came at the Ministry of Justice, which has been expanding its probation officer cohort, and HM Revenue and Customs, which has funding to invest in compliance and debt management staff.
The departments have increased their headcount by 1,280 and 1,115 respectively in the last quarter.
At the 2025 Spending Review last June, HMRC was given £1.7bn over the current SR period to fund 5,500 extra compliance staff and 2,400 debt management staff. From June 2025, its FTE headcount has risen from 65,995 to 69,400.
The biggest decrease is at the Department of Health and Social Care, which has seen its headcount go down by 205.
A government spokesperson said: “We are targeting money at front line services roles, reducing back office spending by 16% by 2030 and halving the hundreds of millions spent each year on expensive consultants.
“These latest figures include the recruitment of more officers to tackle online fraud, and more frontline workers to tackle the backlog in the criminal courts that is preventing lawbreakers from being brought to justice."