The Cabinet Office’s Places for Growth programme exceeded its original target of moving 22,000 civil service jobs out of London by the second quarter of 2024, just-published transparency data has revealed.
Launched in 2020 under the Johnson government, the initial deadline for relocations was the end of the decade – but the Sunak administration brought the target forward by three years in 2023.
Despite the programme’s Conservative-government origins, earlier this month the new Labour government signalled its intent to continue relocating roles away from the capital. It pledged that “thousands” of jobs would move to 13 towns and cities across Britain, with figures to be confirmed as part of next month’s Spending Review.
According to the Cabinet Office’s latest update on Places for Growth, released yesterday, the programme had racked up 23,249 job relocations by the end of June last year. The figure marks an increase of 2,247 job moves on the January-March quarter.
The Home Office has led the departmental league table for role relocations for most of the life of Places for Growth, and the latest figures show no change in that situation. As of the second quarter of 2024 it had relocated 4,433 roles away from the capital.
In second place is the Ministry of Justice with 2,650, followed by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (2,493) and the Cabinet Office (1,617).
At the other end of the scale in the table of 30 government organisations are the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the Office of Rail and Road.
The FCDO’s cumulative tally of relocations under Places for Growth is seven, down from a high of nine in the fourth quarter of 2023. The ORR’s cumulative total is four relocations, down from 125 in the third quarter of 2021.
Manchester spearheads North West jobs boom
A geographic crunch of Places for Growth relocations in England shows that the North West has been the biggest single beneficiary in headcount terms, with 4,692 roles moved to the region. Yorkshire and the Humber is close behind, with 4,038 relocations as of June last year. The East Midlands has so far hosted the fewest relocated jobs: just 610.
In terms of individual towns and cities, Manchester has seen the single biggest influx of civil service jobs as a result of Places for Growth, with 2,358 – just over half of the total uplift in the whole North West region.
Figures for the devolved nations show 2,434 jobs have moved to Scotland under Places for Growth, 1,304 to Wales and 368 to Northern Ireland.
Trouble at the top?
While meeting the original target for relocations was achieved well within even the Sunak government’s accelerated timeframe, Places for Growth’s ambition of locating half of all senior civil service roles away from the capital is proving more challenging.
The Declaration on Government Reform, signed by cabinet ministers and departmental permanent secretaries in June 2021, added a commitment to make the 50% target part of the Places for Growth relocations target.
The Starmer government’s reform plan this month stood by the commitment to have 50% of all SCS members located in the regions by the end of the decade.
According to the Cabinet Office’s latest data on SCS role relocations – which relates to the first quarter of 2024 – just 32.5% of top departmental officials are based outside of London, up from 25.4% in the first quarter of 2021.
Provisional data included as part of the Cabinet Office’s release shows that the proportion of SCS roles in the regions and devolved nations increased to 33.3% by the fourth quarter of 2024. However that figure could be subject to revision.
A continuation of the trend in SCS relocations over the past five years would not be enough to for the SCS target to be met by 2030.
One reason that the target may be more challenging than that for other relocations is the smaller size of the SCS, and the fact that most of the roles “relocated” under Places for Growth have not involved serving civil servants physically leaving the capital. Instead, the programme has sought a regional rebalancing of the civil service by recruiting for new officials in the regions.
Despite the job relocations delivered by Places for Growth, civil service full-time-equivalent headcount in London was 100,660 at the end of March last year, up from 91,660 in 2020.
The 2024 Q1 figures for SCS headcount showed 3,955 full-time-equivalent senior leaders based in the capital against 1,905 based in the regions or devolved nations.
The Cabinet Office’s latest data shows SCS numbers in the capital have not changed much over the past four years. However, numbers of SCS based outside the capital have climbed significantly from 1,370 in the first quarter of 2021.