DWP: Confident of its ability to deliver despite eye-watering cut-backs to staff levels
The number of SCS in the department recorded on 31 July was 230, DWP says – 110 fewer than the number recorded by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) in the third quarter of 2011.
The ONS identified 109,770 full-time equivalent jobs in DWP in Q3 2011, but the DWP says it now employs 87,569 FTEs. According to these figures, SCS now represent just 0.26 per cent of the total staff – a fall from 0.32 per cent on the ONS statistic for 2010.
The news comes as a report on early departures from the civil service by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) warns that the job cuts won’t be sustainable unless plans are put in place to ensure that departments can operate with smaller workforces. “Although departments have moved quickly to reduce headcount, we have not seen evidence, except in a small number of specific areas, of how they are fundamentally rethinking the way they will operate with lower staff numbers. This means that the numbers of staff may increase once restrictions on recruitment and spending have been lifted,” it said.
“The Cabinet Office should ensure all departments produce these plans, review their adequacy, and report the results of this review to us by the end of the 2012-13 financial year,” the report added.
In response, a DWP spokesperson told CSW: “We are confident we have the plans in place to deliver fundamental reform on welfare and pensions whilst meeting challenging efficiency targets with lower staff numbers in the long term.”
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) announced a cut of 26 senior staff by April 2013, to be made among SCS and their military equivalents. Asked how many of the jobs lost would be civilian staff, an MoD spokesman told CSW that “there is no specific breakdown as we are still doing the work on this.”
See the full feature on job cuts