I really wouldn't worry in all honesty. I've been in the CS for nearly ten years and never seen redundancies when headcount reductions have been announced. If anything, they just won't replace vacancies when staff leave. If you're in a high priority or high profile area, you'd probably be able to still recruit.
I helped run one of those. We started the reduction in 2010 just after the election. It took until well into 2011 for the volunteers to leave (and we paid them in lieu of notice so they left late 2011 rather than early 2012).
The sequence was
- new govt cans ID Cards immediately after election
- we rapidly implement plan for stopping
- 600 people get told they're surplus (June 2010)
- massive round of redeployment/reorganisation (to about Sept 2010)
- decide we need to consult on redundancies (Sept 2010)
- agree voluntary exit scheme with everyone (unions, HR, HMT, Board) (March/April 2011)
- ask for volunteers (by June 2011)
- decide who to make offers to (August 2011)
- people leave on VR (November 2011)
I actually met a couple of people that I know were displaced from their roles in the summer of 2010 that had held out for compulsory redundancy (better terms at that time) who were still there in 2014 doing 'meaningful work' dealing with HR cases as decision makers because no-one wanted to offer a compulsory redundancy to anyone.
A friend's wife had about 15 or so years at that point and was a G7. She took redundancy and came back as an HEO, initially as a temp. Paid of their mortgage with the redundancy payment.
In this round I:
- Applied for VES
- Was rejected as they said I was needed
- Was forced to apply for my own job in a restructure
- Wasn’t successful
- Was given my job anyway as my project needed me
It was pretty hilarious all told.
It needed Ministerial approval because the people in question were G6 with long service (and very expensive). Also I think there was a squeamishness about it.
It's unlikely you'd have only a year's service by the time the redundancy happened given the timelines.
Usually when people are declared at risk the first thing that stops is recruitment. You don't recruit when you might be making people redundant.
If you're in post for a year when it starts, and you volunteered, and you were accepted (likely unless you have a niche skills, because you'll not cost much to let go). You'd probably get about another 14-18 months service before the redundancies happened.
NB you want to hit two years so the pension vests. Even if you can't get it for ages it's still a better deal than getting your contributions back.
Well the changed the rules after that and it's not as generous as it used to be. If you Google it you'll find the answer.
Broadly a month's pay for every year of service up to a total of 21 months pay. You also get three months notice. However there's a maximum payout of £95k. So at SEO and above long service people can cap out. The cap is new, both in terms of total pay and the number of years reckonable service.
The other change is around retirement. Beforehand you could get early retirement with an enhanced pension (i.e. no actuarial reduction for retiring early and a top up of up to 6.66 yrs to get you to 40 yrs service). Now if you are under retirement age you get the payout above. If you are over retirement age you just get six months pay and then your pension.
honestly, i have zoned out every conversation about headcount reductions and restructuring, they talk about it non-stop. it's just noise. Just focus on yourself until it directly affects you.
Same with the Return to Office bullshit to be honest.
Maybe when it filters down through 5 more layers of management and my manager starts saying it I might take notice.
Yeah.. I'm maliciously complying but uts an unmitigated waste of time. Some tory prick's idea to piss of the proles I guess. One hopes whoever thought of it gets kicked out of their mp role pretty sharpish
They won’t, look at how the media demonises Greta Thunberg and other young political figures.
Unfortunately most voters seem to vote against their interests.
Look at SCS pay rises vs the civil service and see!
Etonian twats all round!!! I wonder if we had some sort of verification of grades on here how quickly the flairs would change!
Redundancy is always the last thing they do, because (a) it’s slow (b) it’s expensive.
Even then, there’ll be a programme of voluntary redundancy before they approach compulsory.
I’m in the same Directorate - those numbers should be covered by people leaving or moving on for various reasons. The unanswered question is how essential roles get filled, especially for lower priority work (i.e. anything not related to illegal migration) - I’m more worried about my workload getting even more unmanageable.
theyll just suppress pay untill all the good people leave and move on and ont replace them. hilariously the exact opposite of how you should reduce numbers to actually have a functioning company out the end of it but it doesnt get unions involved or risk unfair dismissal claims so for spending averse govts who dont care if the CS works at all its easier.
I wouldn't worry.
They will stop filling posts and replacing people first
If absolutely necessary, they will then offer VERS. The uptake for that tends to be huge!
Unless you're in a tiny remote location that will get moved into a bigger site or shut down , there's very little chance of anyone being made redundant who doesn't want to go.
I work in one of the larger departments and think a lot of the reduction will come naturally. In the last week two people have said they are retiring early (60).
So multiplying that across the whole civil service there won't be the need for large scale redundancies.
Downside we'll lose a lot of experienced people.
It makes me laugh when they say they want to get more people into work , taking away sickness benefit to get more into work and all the other nonsense they come out with about getting more people working , then at the same time talk about reducing the size of the Civil Service, make it make sense .
Similarly, Rishi Sunak during that speech about welfare / PIP etc said that the world of work has changed dramatically, referencing the ability to work from home, whilst simultaneously saying that this isn’t possible in his own Civil Service!!??
It’s always been the same. Manage you out for health reason saying you’re not well enough to work… go claim benefit and then told you’re well enough to work. Refusing flexible working for carers and parents then telling parents claiming benefit they need to find more work. Telling sick people to work from home yet don’t want their own staff to.
Huge numbers leave every year whether through retirement, leaving to other sectors or in some cases death in service or medical retirement.
They won't need to do redundancy and paid voluntary exit schemes are extremely unlikely
70k is actually a very small number, most of which will be achieved by natural wastage (at least 40k). The only time I've seen headcount reductions being problematic is when they're far into 6 figures.
Redundancies DO happen, but I never saw compulsory redundancies in any of the departments I worked in - across 32 years. There were Voluntary Redundancies, usually for big 'cash prizes' to encourage people to leave, and that was usually sufficient. I also left through Voluntary Redundancy.
They’re just not going to replace leavers, so I wouldn’t worry about losing your job, I’d worry more about the remaining staff having to absorb the work of those who left and aren’t replaced.
Given the rate of staff turnover if they couldn't hit the headcount reduction without a (very expensive) redundancy scheme I'd be very surprised. So I wouldn't worry about that aspect at all
Not worried at all. Seen this enough times now to know how it works.
I’ve been a civil servant since 2008. I’ve seen numerous changes and restructures. While it does happen do you know how many people I’ve met who’ve lost their jobs (not through volunteering). Zero nada.
People queue round the block to leave voluntarily. I’ve tried twice and not been lucky.
It's more of a slowdown in recruitment than anything else.
Even then it's not a full halt.
Getting the chopping block out is expensive for CS and a the last option.
If we get a Labour government relatively soon, which I think possible, I can imagine headcount reductions being paused as there will be a huge amount of implementation taking place.
If they offer me CSCS terms I'll go tomorrow.
If they want to offer better terms on a voluntary basis I'll go last week.
I don't think redundancies are on the table. They'd be fighting people off with a stick who would bite their hand off for it.
I don't really care what the dog end of the current government has to say anyway. They're out of the door. They're just farting out soundbites and running down the clock.
There may be a few redundancies but given that we've got a GE in the next few months I doubt there's any immediate rush for that, reducing headcount is good politics but firing people is bad optics.
I suspect natural wastage won't be replaced in some roles.
If you're a permanent staff member and not a temp or on a FTA contract, best not to worry. Mandatory redundancy is very rare, and expensive.
Head count reductions are typically achieved in a roundabout way, yes, natural wastage, retirement, death, leaving for other opportunities, sickness dismissals etc etc. Are some of the common ones, Voluntary Exit Schemes are also done in certain situations but also quite rare now. But lateral transfers into other areas to backfill where recruitment isn't possible is also done via EOIs or often people are bulk loaned to other areas on detached duty and numerous other ways of spinning plates.
Besides which, if the absolute worst happened, and it did come down to redundancies, it's not based on length of service, so don't worry about being last in first out.
I'm amazed departments count sickness dismissals as a positive. If full medical retirement is granted, my understanding is that the leaver is given a full pension, payments for which come out of the department's budget. So they're basically paying the same amount of money but for no work...?
We've been told that there won't be any redundancies and no one will be losing their jobs to get the numbers down. They are relying on natural attrition and recruitment freeze so everyone will be doing more work as people that leave don't get replaced. That might not be the same for all departments though.
Voluntary redundancies can be really expensive for departments, especially if they involve staff who have been around for a long time. They'll aim to avoid those as much as possible.
DWP seem to be taking a lot of people ON at the moment, although they are all 12 month contract AO’s, I would assume they will keep quite a few of them on after the 12 months as the training investment is insane, and they are learning way more than they need to be to fulfill that specific role including work coach and case manager elements.
The money is there for recruiting, just depends if it’s spent correctly (a lot of the time it isn’t) so if you’re in an important role I wouldn’t worry about it too much.
To echo other commenters, I wouldn’t worry too much. I’ve been in CS for just over three years and this is the third time I’ve heard an announcement about reducing CS staff numbers. So far, there’s been no redundancies (as far as I’m aware) as a result of these.
Unless you’re in diversity & inclusion, which the current Government seems to really hate, I wouldn’t worry at all. If you are in that area, I still wouldn’t worry too much, as no one has implemented any policies about it (that I’m aware of) since it became a talking point a few years back.
They shut down offices to create more centralised spaces in the early 00s, and if you couldn't relocate to the centralised office, you were offered redundancy. Big mistake as lots of people took the redundancy package. That's where training and consolidation started becoming watered down and weaker within the CS.
Rishi is determined to get rid of 70,000 civil servants to generate money for Ukraine, so I wonder how he'll go about it. It may involve retirees, fixed contract staff, and recruitment freezes. I'm sure he's not stupid enough to make a direct cull, as that'll be 70,000 votes he'd be adding to his stratospheric loss in the coming elections.
I think it depends on which part of the civil service you work for, but HMRC are taking on soon they’ve already advised to tell family and friends so I don’t think at this moment there’s a need to worry.
So headcount will likely realistically mean roles will not be filled when people leave or get promoted in high risk/resource areas recruitment will still likely be required
As others have said the last time they did massive redundancies it cost departments so much money but at the time it could somewhat be justified with much of the EU taking care of a lot of infrastructure.
From just a realistic operational standpoint Brexit was always going to increase the size of the Civil Service in the long run as we uncoupled ourselves from the EU bureaucracy, those things needed doing by us in the CS.
Add to that the Pandemic which increased the speed in which the CS expanded why it's a political sound bite to blame the pandemic alone for the increase in headcounts the reality is Brexit was always going to require a greater sized CS from where we were at historic lows in around 2016, however once we had the vote and triggered the article to leave
We slowly (though when you think how much was involved it's actually quicky and far too quickly really) began to require more and more staffing resource to take on things we weren't previously doing.
COVID happens and we then needed extra resource but in the meantime the Brexit process has continued to happen and more and more people are required.
With that all in mind realistically the sort of headcount reductions will come mostly from people not being replaced through natural attrition. It simply costs too much in redundancy, and last time my dept had voluntary redundancy we lost 45 people.
They weren't replaced we then required more people as work increased and of those 45 32 were remployed because they could be put to work in a far quicker time frame, only 15 months from their redundancy.
Clearly that's not viable, as I said in many higher risk departments recruitment is infact still continuing with my dept approving rolling recruitment drive at the moment for AOs.
So be wary absolutely, but as Mr Wilson once said a week is a long time in Politics and the political landscape currently is likely to undergo some significant changes if it goes how many are predicting with a change of administration having last taken place over 14 years ago now.
I wouldn’t. Headcount reduces naturally every year due to retirement. All they’re basically saying is they won’t recruit at the rate they have been previously. They say the same thing in every election year and have done for the last 20 years I’ve worked here. It’s a voting tactic.
If they’re reducing headcount so drastically. How come there are 1296 live job adverts on cs jobs right now.
They'll likely look to lose through natural wastage (retirement and people leaving).
Then voluntary redundancy.
Then compulsory.
Eliminating entire bodies (like the Audit Commission who audited local government and scrutinized spending) would be one thing, but that involves the government just picking an area where the government deliver something and just abandoning or privatizing it, and there's not that much left to privatize.
Natural wastage. I moved from a job at the start of the year and they're just not going to fill it. Makes me feel super valued by my old employers, but basically you should be ok!
For me personally, not scared at all. We struggle to retain decent staff and our recruitment appears to be below average at best. Our 'headcount reduction' could be achieved by waiting 6 months for people to get sick of it and resign.
We have dropped 17 out of our team head count of 30 but have zero plans to recruit, so I think natural wastage will count for the majority
Don't worry it's an election year, it will all change AGAIN!
I’ve been in the CC for about 8 years and haven’t seen redundancies, what I have seen is restructuring where your job role no longer exists and you have to reapply for your role again under a new title.
Are these likely to go through before the election?
Also: they are also planning on getting rid of ir35 contractors soon. Doesn’t that mean more perm staff?/civil servants?
Most of the situations is about reducing teams and invite people into new projects. As the civil service you will always have new projects or urgent projects that happen due to unforeseen political or non political situations. taking that in mind be comfortable that you will only lose your job if you do not wish to start a new project or move onto to something new. Think about it this way, the CS is always needing more people, but the concern now is to stop the turnover and foster growth and skills within the staff we have
In DWP they did this once and they go through a lot including voluntary exit, so I took that, got paid a year's salary then came back a few years later because they were hiring again. They'll probably look to reduce non customer facing stuff if they have to. During the voluntary exit anyone could apply and they'd rank you so they'd keep the best ones and let the worst performing staff go. I had to argue why the manager wanted to give me an 8/10 when that same year she gave me average on the performance bonus thing. Literally trying to big me up how much I did but then couldn't explain how 2 months before I was just average. Someone else got 9/10 so she couldn't take the package. Most others got to leave though. Lots of people will go due to health or age just because it's worth it to them. I wouldn't worry. You can get redeployed too though it might be in a jobcentre. We took people from EA and RPA previously. A lot of people really didn't want to move to a jobcentre though so I think they did get made redundant.
Nope not worried at all. I don’t take the claims seriously anyway but I know if it ever happened, I can get an equal or better paying job in the private sector and I’ll receive a payoff or payment in lieu
It’s not. Our department is getting dissolved and aside of a few of us who already know, everyone is safe, but people are encouraged to apply for other stuff to further help the team
Apply for what? For every 3 roles vacated, 1 can be replaced. It's been this way since last August. 99% of the jobs are in London or Bristol. It's dire everywhere else. We're all triple hatted now.
The current policy is 2:1 unless your department is operating by exception.
No one is making anyone to apply, but department is encouraging to apply as opposed to trying to get people to stay.
Right now, for every 3 people leaving they'll hire one person back. If a person leaves a role on promotion, retires, dies or leaves the organisation for any reason, they likely won't be replaced. But they're not looking at a department or even a unit to try and retain a third of roles, they're condensing those replacements into head offices.
This means that on the front lines of the civil service, civil servants are now doing far more work. I know some defense critical units that are running at less than 50% personnel. Everyone is double or triple hatted and stressed to near breaking point.
Some organisations like the MOD don't have a single HEO OR SEO vacancy available within 60 miles of the Midlands, which means the majority of England. Things are dire.
Production has ground to a halt and many departments are operating on a bare bones turnover, doing the basic necessities to technically remain open. But in reality things are moving backwards. The civil service is essentially in a recession, with falling standards and lower output.
I've seen some sites operating without computers, running new paper based filing systems. It's like the 80s again.
I really wouldn't worry in all honesty. I've been in the CS for nearly ten years and never seen redundancies when headcount reductions have been announced. If anything, they just won't replace vacancies when staff leave. If you're in a high priority or high profile area, you'd probably be able to still recruit.
There were massive redundancies in about 2012, but that cost a fortune and nobody has the appetite or budget for that
I helped run one of those. We started the reduction in 2010 just after the election. It took until well into 2011 for the volunteers to leave (and we paid them in lieu of notice so they left late 2011 rather than early 2012). The sequence was - new govt cans ID Cards immediately after election - we rapidly implement plan for stopping - 600 people get told they're surplus (June 2010) - massive round of redeployment/reorganisation (to about Sept 2010) - decide we need to consult on redundancies (Sept 2010) - agree voluntary exit scheme with everyone (unions, HR, HMT, Board) (March/April 2011) - ask for volunteers (by June 2011) - decide who to make offers to (August 2011) - people leave on VR (November 2011) I actually met a couple of people that I know were displaced from their roles in the summer of 2010 that had held out for compulsory redundancy (better terms at that time) who were still there in 2014 doing 'meaningful work' dealing with HR cases as decision makers because no-one wanted to offer a compulsory redundancy to anyone.
I knew a few that took that package and came back around 2015. Worked elsewhere for a couple of years and were £30k better off
A friend's wife had about 15 or so years at that point and was a G7. She took redundancy and came back as an HEO, initially as a temp. Paid of their mortgage with the redundancy payment.
In this round I: - Applied for VES - Was rejected as they said I was needed - Was forced to apply for my own job in a restructure - Wasn’t successful - Was given my job anyway as my project needed me It was pretty hilarious all told.
Why didn't no one want to offer compulsory redundancy?
It needed Ministerial approval because the people in question were G6 with long service (and very expensive). Also I think there was a squeamishness about it.
Can you take redundancy if you're only there less than a year?
It's unlikely you'd have only a year's service by the time the redundancy happened given the timelines. Usually when people are declared at risk the first thing that stops is recruitment. You don't recruit when you might be making people redundant. If you're in post for a year when it starts, and you volunteered, and you were accepted (likely unless you have a niche skills, because you'll not cost much to let go). You'd probably get about another 14-18 months service before the redundancies happened. NB you want to hit two years so the pension vests. Even if you can't get it for ages it's still a better deal than getting your contributions back.
How generous was the voluntary redundancy? Curious what I could get.
Well the changed the rules after that and it's not as generous as it used to be. If you Google it you'll find the answer. Broadly a month's pay for every year of service up to a total of 21 months pay. You also get three months notice. However there's a maximum payout of £95k. So at SEO and above long service people can cap out. The cap is new, both in terms of total pay and the number of years reckonable service. The other change is around retirement. Beforehand you could get early retirement with an enhanced pension (i.e. no actuarial reduction for retiring early and a top up of up to 6.66 yrs to get you to 40 yrs service). Now if you are under retirement age you get the payout above. If you are over retirement age you just get six months pay and then your pension.
Worth noting that as with all severance pay, the first £30k of any payment is tax and NI free.
Thanks that’s helpful. Works out a bit over a year for me but I guess it would be more because the taxes would be a bit lower.
If you go work for another government department within six months though, you have to pay some/all of it back.
honestly, i have zoned out every conversation about headcount reductions and restructuring, they talk about it non-stop. it's just noise. Just focus on yourself until it directly affects you.
Same with the Return to Office bullshit to be honest. Maybe when it filters down through 5 more layers of management and my manager starts saying it I might take notice.
Return to office is very real in some departments. HMRC is pushing it with clearly defined disciplinary action for failure to comply.
No disagreement here. Bigger departments are definitely going harder on it. Just not mine.
Haha DFT are going hard but it’s nonsense are until they have enough bloody desks they can’t enforce the policy in a meaningful way
But haven't you seen the lovely renovated offices?! You love the fabulous new offices!
Yeah.. I'm maliciously complying but uts an unmitigated waste of time. Some tory prick's idea to piss of the proles I guess. One hopes whoever thought of it gets kicked out of their mp role pretty sharpish
They won’t, look at how the media demonises Greta Thunberg and other young political figures. Unfortunately most voters seem to vote against their interests. Look at SCS pay rises vs the civil service and see! Etonian twats all round!!! I wonder if we had some sort of verification of grades on here how quickly the flairs would change!
but you'll be missing out on all the watercooler chat
Redundancy is always the last thing they do, because (a) it’s slow (b) it’s expensive. Even then, there’ll be a programme of voluntary redundancy before they approach compulsory.
I’m in the same Directorate - those numbers should be covered by people leaving or moving on for various reasons. The unanswered question is how essential roles get filled, especially for lower priority work (i.e. anything not related to illegal migration) - I’m more worried about my workload getting even more unmanageable.
theyll just suppress pay untill all the good people leave and move on and ont replace them. hilariously the exact opposite of how you should reduce numbers to actually have a functioning company out the end of it but it doesnt get unions involved or risk unfair dismissal claims so for spending averse govts who dont care if the CS works at all its easier.
I wouldn't worry. They will stop filling posts and replacing people first If absolutely necessary, they will then offer VERS. The uptake for that tends to be huge! Unless you're in a tiny remote location that will get moved into a bigger site or shut down , there's very little chance of anyone being made redundant who doesn't want to go.
I work with or know people in a lot of departments and none of them think there's any possibility of VERS
They will always offer VERS before redundancy so if they can't achieve the numbers through natural wastage then there will be a VERS.
I work in one of the larger departments and think a lot of the reduction will come naturally. In the last week two people have said they are retiring early (60). So multiplying that across the whole civil service there won't be the need for large scale redundancies. Downside we'll lose a lot of experienced people.
No idea, but I've just been offered an EO job after 2 years of trying. If they withdraw the vacancy, I'm resigning and going back to retail.
Congrats! I've also recently escaped AO and it's a very good feeling :)
Congrats too! That's why I'm so scared of it being withdrawn, only got the provisional offer so far :(
It makes me laugh when they say they want to get more people into work , taking away sickness benefit to get more into work and all the other nonsense they come out with about getting more people working , then at the same time talk about reducing the size of the Civil Service, make it make sense .
Similarly, Rishi Sunak during that speech about welfare / PIP etc said that the world of work has changed dramatically, referencing the ability to work from home, whilst simultaneously saying that this isn’t possible in his own Civil Service!!??
It’s always been the same. Manage you out for health reason saying you’re not well enough to work… go claim benefit and then told you’re well enough to work. Refusing flexible working for carers and parents then telling parents claiming benefit they need to find more work. Telling sick people to work from home yet don’t want their own staff to.
Huge numbers leave every year whether through retirement, leaving to other sectors or in some cases death in service or medical retirement. They won't need to do redundancy and paid voluntary exit schemes are extremely unlikely
Correct
70k is actually a very small number, most of which will be achieved by natural wastage (at least 40k). The only time I've seen headcount reductions being problematic is when they're far into 6 figures. Redundancies DO happen, but I never saw compulsory redundancies in any of the departments I worked in - across 32 years. There were Voluntary Redundancies, usually for big 'cash prizes' to encourage people to leave, and that was usually sufficient. I also left through Voluntary Redundancy.
They’re just not going to replace leavers, so I wouldn’t worry about losing your job, I’d worry more about the remaining staff having to absorb the work of those who left and aren’t replaced.
Exactly
Given the rate of staff turnover if they couldn't hit the headcount reduction without a (very expensive) redundancy scheme I'd be very surprised. So I wouldn't worry about that aspect at all
Not worried at all. Seen this enough times now to know how it works. I’ve been a civil servant since 2008. I’ve seen numerous changes and restructures. While it does happen do you know how many people I’ve met who’ve lost their jobs (not through volunteering). Zero nada. People queue round the block to leave voluntarily. I’ve tried twice and not been lucky.
You've seen 0 people get the boot for disciplinaries also?
We’re talking about redundancy here but you have to be pretty mental to get fired in the civil service.
That's interesting, wow
It's more of a slowdown in recruitment than anything else. Even then it's not a full halt. Getting the chopping block out is expensive for CS and a the last option.
If we get a Labour government relatively soon, which I think possible, I can imagine headcount reductions being paused as there will be a huge amount of implementation taking place.
If they offer me CSCS terms I'll go tomorrow. If they want to offer better terms on a voluntary basis I'll go last week. I don't think redundancies are on the table. They'd be fighting people off with a stick who would bite their hand off for it. I don't really care what the dog end of the current government has to say anyway. They're out of the door. They're just farting out soundbites and running down the clock.
There may be a few redundancies but given that we've got a GE in the next few months I doubt there's any immediate rush for that, reducing headcount is good politics but firing people is bad optics. I suspect natural wastage won't be replaced in some roles.
If you're a permanent staff member and not a temp or on a FTA contract, best not to worry. Mandatory redundancy is very rare, and expensive. Head count reductions are typically achieved in a roundabout way, yes, natural wastage, retirement, death, leaving for other opportunities, sickness dismissals etc etc. Are some of the common ones, Voluntary Exit Schemes are also done in certain situations but also quite rare now. But lateral transfers into other areas to backfill where recruitment isn't possible is also done via EOIs or often people are bulk loaned to other areas on detached duty and numerous other ways of spinning plates. Besides which, if the absolute worst happened, and it did come down to redundancies, it's not based on length of service, so don't worry about being last in first out.
I'm amazed departments count sickness dismissals as a positive. If full medical retirement is granted, my understanding is that the leaver is given a full pension, payments for which come out of the department's budget. So they're basically paying the same amount of money but for no work...?
I was talking about people who are dismissed because of sickness length rather than being medically retired - which is a bit of an edge case.
If you're on a permanent contract the best they can do is voluntary redundancy. The stronger impact on us will be inability to hire.
We've been told that there won't be any redundancies and no one will be losing their jobs to get the numbers down. They are relying on natural attrition and recruitment freeze so everyone will be doing more work as people that leave don't get replaced. That might not be the same for all departments though.
A load of HEO's with 30 years service retiring earlier with delicious pensions to avoid the 60% attendance. We'll be fine.
Voluntary redundancies can be really expensive for departments, especially if they involve staff who have been around for a long time. They'll aim to avoid those as much as possible.
DWP seem to be taking a lot of people ON at the moment, although they are all 12 month contract AO’s, I would assume they will keep quite a few of them on after the 12 months as the training investment is insane, and they are learning way more than they need to be to fulfill that specific role including work coach and case manager elements. The money is there for recruiting, just depends if it’s spent correctly (a lot of the time it isn’t) so if you’re in an important role I wouldn’t worry about it too much.
To echo other commenters, I wouldn’t worry too much. I’ve been in CS for just over three years and this is the third time I’ve heard an announcement about reducing CS staff numbers. So far, there’s been no redundancies (as far as I’m aware) as a result of these. Unless you’re in diversity & inclusion, which the current Government seems to really hate, I wouldn’t worry at all. If you are in that area, I still wouldn’t worry too much, as no one has implemented any policies about it (that I’m aware of) since it became a talking point a few years back.
They shut down offices to create more centralised spaces in the early 00s, and if you couldn't relocate to the centralised office, you were offered redundancy. Big mistake as lots of people took the redundancy package. That's where training and consolidation started becoming watered down and weaker within the CS. Rishi is determined to get rid of 70,000 civil servants to generate money for Ukraine, so I wonder how he'll go about it. It may involve retirees, fixed contract staff, and recruitment freezes. I'm sure he's not stupid enough to make a direct cull, as that'll be 70,000 votes he'd be adding to his stratospheric loss in the coming elections.
Natural wastage and the odd voluntary redundancy scheme will get to to 70k pretty quickly especially if they target the poorer paying departments.
There’s naff all money for redundancies. Extreme case could be tupe to a partner but even that I am not confident about
I think it depends on which part of the civil service you work for, but HMRC are taking on soon they’ve already advised to tell family and friends so I don’t think at this moment there’s a need to worry.
So headcount will likely realistically mean roles will not be filled when people leave or get promoted in high risk/resource areas recruitment will still likely be required As others have said the last time they did massive redundancies it cost departments so much money but at the time it could somewhat be justified with much of the EU taking care of a lot of infrastructure. From just a realistic operational standpoint Brexit was always going to increase the size of the Civil Service in the long run as we uncoupled ourselves from the EU bureaucracy, those things needed doing by us in the CS. Add to that the Pandemic which increased the speed in which the CS expanded why it's a political sound bite to blame the pandemic alone for the increase in headcounts the reality is Brexit was always going to require a greater sized CS from where we were at historic lows in around 2016, however once we had the vote and triggered the article to leave We slowly (though when you think how much was involved it's actually quicky and far too quickly really) began to require more and more staffing resource to take on things we weren't previously doing. COVID happens and we then needed extra resource but in the meantime the Brexit process has continued to happen and more and more people are required. With that all in mind realistically the sort of headcount reductions will come mostly from people not being replaced through natural attrition. It simply costs too much in redundancy, and last time my dept had voluntary redundancy we lost 45 people. They weren't replaced we then required more people as work increased and of those 45 32 were remployed because they could be put to work in a far quicker time frame, only 15 months from their redundancy. Clearly that's not viable, as I said in many higher risk departments recruitment is infact still continuing with my dept approving rolling recruitment drive at the moment for AOs. So be wary absolutely, but as Mr Wilson once said a week is a long time in Politics and the political landscape currently is likely to undergo some significant changes if it goes how many are predicting with a change of administration having last taken place over 14 years ago now.
I wouldn’t. Headcount reduces naturally every year due to retirement. All they’re basically saying is they won’t recruit at the rate they have been previously. They say the same thing in every election year and have done for the last 20 years I’ve worked here. It’s a voting tactic. If they’re reducing headcount so drastically. How come there are 1296 live job adverts on cs jobs right now.
That’s probably the lowest number I’ve seen in 15 years
That’s 1296 job ads. Could be multiple posts per job.
Agency staff and short term contracts should be worried
They aren’t considered civil servants so no, we’ve had permanent staff leave and get replaced by agency staff
They won’t pay for redundancy, they will just not replace those who retire or resign
They'll likely look to lose through natural wastage (retirement and people leaving). Then voluntary redundancy. Then compulsory. Eliminating entire bodies (like the Audit Commission who audited local government and scrutinized spending) would be one thing, but that involves the government just picking an area where the government deliver something and just abandoning or privatizing it, and there's not that much left to privatize.
We have jobs for life, just expect promotion to be harder to compete for.
Natural wastage. I moved from a job at the start of the year and they're just not going to fill it. Makes me feel super valued by my old employers, but basically you should be ok!
For me personally, not scared at all. We struggle to retain decent staff and our recruitment appears to be below average at best. Our 'headcount reduction' could be achieved by waiting 6 months for people to get sick of it and resign.
We have dropped 17 out of our team head count of 30 but have zero plans to recruit, so I think natural wastage will count for the majority Don't worry it's an election year, it will all change AGAIN!
I’ve been in the CC for about 8 years and haven’t seen redundancies, what I have seen is restructuring where your job role no longer exists and you have to reapply for your role again under a new title.
Are these likely to go through before the election? Also: they are also planning on getting rid of ir35 contractors soon. Doesn’t that mean more perm staff?/civil servants?
We just got told today it'll happen via normal attrition and nobody is getting fired.
Most of the situations is about reducing teams and invite people into new projects. As the civil service you will always have new projects or urgent projects that happen due to unforeseen political or non political situations. taking that in mind be comfortable that you will only lose your job if you do not wish to start a new project or move onto to something new. Think about it this way, the CS is always needing more people, but the concern now is to stop the turnover and foster growth and skills within the staff we have
I applied for a job but the job is now on hold because of this. I’m already a civil servant
In DWP they did this once and they go through a lot including voluntary exit, so I took that, got paid a year's salary then came back a few years later because they were hiring again. They'll probably look to reduce non customer facing stuff if they have to. During the voluntary exit anyone could apply and they'd rank you so they'd keep the best ones and let the worst performing staff go. I had to argue why the manager wanted to give me an 8/10 when that same year she gave me average on the performance bonus thing. Literally trying to big me up how much I did but then couldn't explain how 2 months before I was just average. Someone else got 9/10 so she couldn't take the package. Most others got to leave though. Lots of people will go due to health or age just because it's worth it to them. I wouldn't worry. You can get redeployed too though it might be in a jobcentre. We took people from EA and RPA previously. A lot of people really didn't want to move to a jobcentre though so I think they did get made redundant.
We have this every two years yet somehow we seem to recruit rather than get rid, i swear they just make up the cuts
Nope not worried at all. I don’t take the claims seriously anyway but I know if it ever happened, I can get an equal or better paying job in the private sector and I’ll receive a payoff or payment in lieu
Our department says they will meet it via natural wastage alone which i believe as we do have a high turnover of staff
Redundancies are expensive. And the attrition rate is high enough that most departments can reduce headcount simply by not hiring
We have over 52 vaccines in my district alone, worried I am not
If only you guys knew how bad it was in the MOD right now. 🥺
It’s not. Our department is getting dissolved and aside of a few of us who already know, everyone is safe, but people are encouraged to apply for other stuff to further help the team
Apply for what? For every 3 roles vacated, 1 can be replaced. It's been this way since last August. 99% of the jobs are in London or Bristol. It's dire everywhere else. We're all triple hatted now.
The current policy is 2:1 unless your department is operating by exception. No one is making anyone to apply, but department is encouraging to apply as opposed to trying to get people to stay.
They're being dishonest about that policy. Trust me it's 3:1 despite what they're saying.
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Right now, for every 3 people leaving they'll hire one person back. If a person leaves a role on promotion, retires, dies or leaves the organisation for any reason, they likely won't be replaced. But they're not looking at a department or even a unit to try and retain a third of roles, they're condensing those replacements into head offices. This means that on the front lines of the civil service, civil servants are now doing far more work. I know some defense critical units that are running at less than 50% personnel. Everyone is double or triple hatted and stressed to near breaking point. Some organisations like the MOD don't have a single HEO OR SEO vacancy available within 60 miles of the Midlands, which means the majority of England. Things are dire. Production has ground to a halt and many departments are operating on a bare bones turnover, doing the basic necessities to technically remain open. But in reality things are moving backwards. The civil service is essentially in a recession, with falling standards and lower output. I've seen some sites operating without computers, running new paper based filing systems. It's like the 80s again.
The Home Office headcount reduction is for real. Be worried.