The civil service’s biggest union says it has secured “radical improvements” to the rules governing how union representatives can use their so-called “facility time” and the costs departments incur as a result.
According to the new Civil Service Facility Time Framework and Guidance, which was published last month, civil service union reps can now claim facility time for union activities as well as union duties.
Union duties include matters such as pay negotiating and both preparing for and attending meetings with management. Union activities cover things like attending conferences, discussing cases with other reps and undertaking union-related learning.
The new guidance, which replaces 2018’s Facility Time Framework, encourages departments to “explicitly consider” providing paid time off for trade union representatives to attend their union’s annual conferences.
It says the events are “a valuable means of fostering constructive industrial relations and enabling the setting of policy”. The document adds that where trade union representatives are also members of their union’s national executive committee, paid time off to attend committee meetings “should also be considered”.
Departments are told to establish their own local process for reviewing and approving paid trade union activity (TUA) requests, recognising that the default position remains that time off for TUA should be unpaid. They are also advised that the approval level for granting paid TUA should be “consistently applied” across the department and signed off by the relevant departmental lead, such as the head of employee relations.
Goodbye ‘hard cap’
The new guidance also removes the previous “hard cap” on the proportion of a department’s paybill that can be spent on facility time. While the previous mandatory limit was 0.1% of paybill, the new guidance retains the 0.1% figure as a “suggested guideline”.
There is no change to the previous requirement for trade union representatives to spend at least 50% of their time delivering their official civil service role. However, the guidance states that union health-and-safety representatives can exclude those statutory duties from the “maximum” 50% facility-time limit.
A PCS briefing on the new framework described it as delivering “radical improvements” on the 2018 guidance.
PCS national president Martin Cavanagh said the changes set out in the new framework would “make a positive difference” to PCS representatives at all levels of the union.
“We've worked hard, not only to relieve the time pressures faced by our hard-working activists, but also to make attending our union conferences more accessible – particularly for those reps with caring responsibilities, whose annual leave is particularly precious,” he said. “This can only make our union's sovereign body even more representative and even more democratic.”
A government spokesperson said: “Facility time, which gives trade union representatives time to represent members, has been a legal right for decades, and we expect that civil servants’ focus remains on their primary roles.”
According to Cabinet Office statistics on public sector trade union facility time for 2024-25, the Department for Work and Pensions had the most trade union representatives on its staff – 1,014, or 929 full-time-equivalent staff. All were described as spending 50% or less of their time on paid union duties.
HM Revenue and Customs came in second place with 776 trade-union representatives, or 720 full-time equivalents. Of those, 594 reported spending from 1%-50% of their paid time on trade union work; 177 reported spending no paid time on trade union work; four reported spending between 51% and 99% of their paid time on trade-union work; and one reported spending 100% of their paid time on trade-union work.
The Scottish Prison Service was recorded as having 123 trade union representatives, or 119 full-time equivalents. Of them, 49 spent no paid time on trade union work; 43 spent between 1% and 50% of their paid time on trade union work; five spent between 51% and 99% of their paid time on trade union work; and 26 spent 100% of their time on paid trade union work.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Scottish Prison Service topped the table of departments with the highest proportion of paybill spent on union facility time: 0.69%. That time came at a cost of £1.88m.
HMRC spent 0.06% of its paybill on union facility time, coming at a cost of £2.29m in 2024-25. DWP spent 0.02% of its paybill on union facility time, valued at £936,412.
The Ministry of Justice had the civil service’s overall highest spend on facility time: £3.28m. That related to 647 trade union representatives (638 FTEs) and was 0.07% of the department’s paybill.
The total figure for facility time spending at all 38 civil service organisations included in the statistics was £13.75m.
The Employment Rights Act 2025 repeals the trade union facility time publication requirements for public sector employers. An impact assessment for the draft legislation said the move would result in a £300,000 annual saving for the public sector.