The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government is planning to reduce the size of its workforce by 10% over the Spending Review 2025 period, a minister has said.
Alex Norris, minister for democracy and local growth at MHCLG, gave the update on headcount reductions plans in response to a parliamentary written question from Conservative MP Kevin Hollinrake.
Hollinrake asked for the department’s target number of civil servants in each year of the Spending Review 2025.
In his response, published yesterday, Norris said: “We are aiming to reduce the number of civil servants working in this department by at least 10% over the course of the Spending Review period. This in line with the government’s wider civil service reform plan and commitment to reducing administration costs of the civil service by 15% by 2030.”
The minister said MHCLG is “implementing an ambitious efficiency plan to support this objective, focused primarily on reducing back-office costs and building a leaner, more efficient, and highly skilled workforce”.
“This will enable us to deliver the government’s priorities while maintaining the flexibility to respond to emerging needs,” he said.
Norris added that civil servants in frontline roles “will continue to be aligned with the funding and priority programmes that underpin these activities”.
The Spending Review period covers 2026-27, 2027-28 and 2028-29 for day-to-day spending, and those years plus 2029-30 for capital spending.
As part of the SR, departments have set out plans to cut administration budget costs by an average of 16% in real terms, with 11% of that to come between 2025-26 and 2028-29 and 5% in 2029-30.
As acknowledged by Norris, a large proportion of these savings are likely to come from reducing the size of departments’ workforces and thus saving money on salaries, which make up a sizeable chunk of admin budgets.
MHCLG’s commitment for admin savings is 15%, with 10% of that to be delivered in 2025-26 to 2028-29 and 5% in 2029-30.
In its efficiency plans, MHCLG set out that it would use AI and insourcing to “enable a more slimline and agile workforce”. The department has also launched a voluntary exit scheme to help reduce its numbers.
MHCLG’s current headcount (full-time equivalent) is 4,765 – as of March. A 10% reduction from the current figure would see this drop by almost 500 to 4,289. However, the SR period does not begin until next April and Norris’s commitment is to reduce it from the numbers at that point.
What have other departments said about headcount reductions?
Many departments have set out plans to slim their headcount.
Cabinet Office permanent secretary Cat Little said in April that 540 officials will leave the department through the voluntary exit scheme it launched in December, and that a restructuring over the course of the Spending Review period will reduce its headcount by a further 600-700. In its efficiency delivery plan for SR25, it said this would include “rationalising one-to-one line management relationships".
In the same month, the Department for Transport set out plans to reduce its the size of its workforce by around 300 civil servants via voluntary exits.
And the Ministry of Defence's permanent secretary told MPs in November that he expected the MoD to have a headcount at least 10% lower than the then-56,800 number in five years’ time.
Defra, meanwhile, set out in its efficiency delivery plan for SR25 that it plans to deliver savings through headcount reductions. The department said it has already reduced its headcount by around 8% since July 2024 and will reduce it by a further 5% during 2025-26, the financial year before the SR25 period begins.
Many other departments have also set out a desire to reduce the size of their workforce in their SR25 departmental efficiency plans but not given firm details of how many or what proportion of jobs it plans to lose.