Whitehall pay bill soars by 10% despite staff cuts

10 Mar 11
Excessive promotions for senior civil servants have increased Whitehall’s pay bill by 10% even though employee numbers have fallen, the National Audit Office has found.
By Mark Smulian


11 March 2011

Excessive promotions for senior civil servants have increased Whitehall’s pay bill by 10% even though employee numbers have fallen, the National Audit Office has found.

Its report,Managingstaff costs in central government, published today, called for ‘greater discipline… over the creation of posts and the management of promotions to prevent any further inflationary effects [on] staff costs’.

Between 2001 and 2010 the increasing number of those employed at higher grades helped push up total central government staff costs by 10% in real terms, reaching £16.4bn. In the same period, staff numbers fell by 1% to 493,000.

‘The growth in central government staff costs is largely the result of an unplanned increase in the number of staff in higher grades,’ the report said.

While the numbers declined in lower grades, they rose in all higher grades,  – up to 67% in grades six and seven.

The NAO said this change in the mix of grades was directly responsible for half the increase in staff costs.

There were also increases in performance-related pay. This had barely existed in 2001 but by 2009/10 amounted to around £200m, equivalent to 1% of the pay bill, the report pointed out.

NAO head Amyas Morse said: ‘Increasing numbers of higher grade posts have led to much of the recent cost growth.

‘The centre of government needs to review its ability to understand and challenge these management decisions.’

The report also highlighted that civil service departments did not ‘have a comprehensive understanding of their own staff cost to support staff cost reduction’, while poor management information meant staff skills were not fully utilised and contractors were unnecessarily employed.

Public Accounts Committee chair Margaret Hodge said: ‘It is just not acceptable for management layers and bureaucracy to build up in the civil service with nobody in government controlling what was happening.

‘The report reveals that departments don’t know how their staff are spending their time, have difficulty in assessing the value of their activities and don’t know if they have the right skills.’

Did you enjoy this article?

AddToAny

Top