Civil service reform edges forward

By johnredwood on December 13, 2024

I was pleased to see the government now recognises the productivity collapse in the public sector. They say they wish to reduce the civil service by 10,000. That would be a modest start.

They need to be more ambitious. Applying a policy of natural wastage to avoid any redundancies should free more than 30,000 a year. As people retire or move to another job so you can slim the establishment and promote or transfer existing staff into the important jobs you need to keep. A speedier policy could augment this with a call for voluntary redundancies, though this requires suitable severance payments.

It is also important to widen this to include the enlarged administrative cadres of the wider public sector, especially the NHS.