HR

The proportion of women taking new public appointments is “not good enough”, public appointments commissioner Sir David Normington has said.

The UK has the highest rate of depression-related sickness in Europe, according to a recent survey by the European Depression Alliance. And alarmingly, over a third of the 792 managers surveyed said they have no formal support in place to help them deal with depressed employees. We have a very long way to go before we can say we’re properly supporting employers and employees in recognising and managing depression in the workplace. And this is certainly true within the civil service.

Privilege days – where civil servants get extra days off following bank holidays or on days significant to the monarchy – are “completely out of line” with what you would see in the private sector and must be reviewed, Sir Bob Kerslake, head of the civil service, has told CSW.

The Department for Transport’s decision to publicly suspend three officials last month when it reopened bidding for the West Coast Mainline franchise was “immoral”, former Labour transport secretary Lord Adonis said last week.

Two thirds of civil servants believe that media and political criticism has “significantly damaged” or “fundamentally undermined” perceptions of the civil service, according to an exclusive poll conducted by CSW.

Phil Wynn Owen has today taken on the role of interim permanent secretary at the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC). He’ll hold the job until a permanent successor is found to replace Moira Wallace, who announced her departure in July. At the time, DECC said it intended to make a permanent appointment by this point, but this week the Cabinet Office said it is “still in the process of concluding the recruitment.”

Some ministers are frustrated with civil servants who are slow to implement policies, Richard Heaton, the new permanent secretary of the Cabinet Office, has acknowledged. To overcome this, he said, civil servants must push for more clarity from ministers on whether they have made firm policy decisions, or whether they are waiting for more evidence before proceeding.

Alan Cave, a former director of the Work Programme and other welfare-to-work schemes at the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), has left to join Serco, the outsourced services provider. The DWP will check his job offer against civil service business appointment rules before he is allowed to accept.

Health department permanent secretary Una O’Brien has written to other permanent secretaries asking them to sign up to public health campaigns designed to improve the health of their staff.

The DCMS will cut its staff, forcing them re-apply for their jobs, accept voluntary redundancy or leave by other mutual agreement.

Civil servants should be prepared to see further significant changes to their accountability arrangements, Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude told CSW yesterday after he announced plans to publish permanent secretaries’ objectives online.

Civil servants should not be experts in any particular fields, but instead should be generalist administrators, Cabinet Office minister Oliver Letwin said in a speech at the Institute for Government on Monday.

From October a new cyber research institute hosted by University College London will begin a 3.5-year programme to investigate ways to improve cyber security.

Brian Moore left his job as director general of the UK Border Force yesterday, having announced his departure at a Home Affairs Committee hearing in the morning. He has been succeeded on an interim basis by Tony Smith, a senior director at the UK Border Agency (UKBA) who was responsible for the delivery of its Olympic programme.

Cuts to civilian staff at the MoD are falling more heavily on the senior ranks, making the department less top-heavy. Tim Fish reports on the progress of its downsizing efforts compared to those of other departments

The coalition government doesn’t value civil servants, who are increasingly incentivised to pursue higher financial rewards elsewhere, former Ministry of Defence permanent secretary Sir Richard Mottram has said.

The Treasury (HMT) has instructed departments to put interim staff employed for longer than six months and earning more than £220 a day onto the departmental payroll, or to gain assurances that the contractors are paying the appropriate amount of tax and national insurance.

The coalition has appointed more tsars per year than the Labour government did, research by King’s College London has revealed.

The government’s Civil Service Reform Plan states: “Given ministers’ direct accountability to Parliament for the performance of their departments and for the implementation of their policy priorities, we believe they should have a stronger role in the recruitment of a permanent secretary.”