DCLG sees biggest civil servant staff cuts

10 Apr 15

The Department for Communities and Local Government suffered the largest fall in staff numbers of any ministry since 2010, with over one in three posts being cut, an analysis by the Institute for Government has found.

The think-tank’s latest Whitehall Monitor report found the civil service employed 405,400 full-time equivalent staff in the three months to the end of 2014. This was down 1,290 on the previous quarter, and a reduction of more than 70,000 since the 2010 Spending Review.

DCLG has seen the biggest percentage fall in the period, with staff numbers falling at Eric Pickles’ department by nearly 900, a decline of 35%.

The Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport had also seen staff numbers fall by nearly 30%, the report found, with a further four departments making reductions of 20% of more.

Following the reductions, the IfG estimated that around a fifth of all civil servants now work for DWP. Overall, the four biggest employers in Whitehall – DWP, the Ministry of Justice, Revenue and Customs and the Ministry of Defence – employ more staff than the rest of government combined.

However, the IfG also highlighted the extent of staff reductions, which amount to a 15% reduction in the size of the civil service since 2010, had not met the target in the government’s Civil Service Reform Plan, published in 2012.

This had forecast a fall of 23% by 2015. To meet that, a further 25,000 staff would need to be cut, the report stated.
 

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