Recommendations & Conclusions
4 items
1
Conclusion
Eighth Report - Where Civil Servants Wo…
Acknowledged
The Government appears to be making progress towards its target of relocating 22,000 posts by 2030, and steady progress towards a target of reducing the proportion of Senior Civil Service posts based in London to 50% of the total. However, a number of issues with the framing and reporting of …
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The Government appears to be making progress towards its target of relocating 22,000 posts by 2030, and steady progress towards a target of reducing the proportion of Senior Civil Service posts based in London to 50% of the total. However, a number of issues with the framing and reporting of these targets makes it difficult to judge how substantial the Government’s achievements are. It is striking that the Cabinet Office has published so little information on the rationale and design of its Places for Growth programme, and also its new Plan for London. In particular, the Cabinet Office has not published a clear and definitive statement on the exact region from which it is seeking to relocate posts, nor of exactly what its target for senior officials is. In some of its communications it is also adopting a boosterish approach to reporting progress, which is likely to give an exaggerated picture of its achievements. Overall, the Cabinet Office has not done the basics of launching a programme well, notably failing to be clear and consistent in framing the rationale underlying the programme and the targets it is aiming to achieve.
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Government response AI summary
The government acknowledges the committee's inquiry and highlights progress made through the Places for Growth and Government Hubs programmes. They state they support enhanced transparency and have accepted recommendations where appropriate.
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3
Recommendation
Eighth Report - Where Civil Servants Wo…
Acknowledged
The Government has made high-profile commitments that Ministers would spend significant working time in regional offices—though without clearly explaining what value this was meant to deliver. To date, Ministers have not been able to meet this commitment, making flying visits rather than basing themselves outside London for significant amounts of …
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The Government has made high-profile commitments that Ministers would spend significant working time in regional offices—though without clearly explaining what value this was meant to deliver. To date, Ministers have not been able to meet this commitment, making flying visits rather than basing themselves outside London for significant amounts of time to conduct substantive work. The responsible Minister himself suggested a good reason for this: ministerial work is closely linked to Parliament and the Cabinet, and long travel times make it impractical for Ministers to spend very significant working time away from Westminster. The Government should either live up to its public commitment for Ministers to spend more time working outside the capital, or issue a revised ambition with an accurate statement of what Ministers can actually commit to. This should extend to the Government’s purpose in building Cabinet meeting rooms in two of its new Hubs, and the Cabinet Office should include in its response to this report details of when the Cabinet plans to meet in Edinburgh and Cardiff. (Paragraph 33) 48 Where Civil Servants Work: Planning for the future of the Government’s estates
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Government response AI summary
The government acknowledges the difficulty of balancing ministerial duties in London with the commitment to spend time in regional offices. They state that ministers have visited staff in central Government hubs and that facilities are available for ministers in key locations, but that the planning …
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10
Conclusion
Eighth Report - Where Civil Servants Wo…
Acknowledged
Previous governments which implemented similar programmes of civil service relocation acknowledged the risks and potential disadvantages–for example, significant upfront costs of relocation and redundancy packages, plus a loss of efficiency and coherence from moving policy roles far away from Whitehall. The Government is doing things differently this time–for example, generally …
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Previous governments which implemented similar programmes of civil service relocation acknowledged the risks and potential disadvantages–for example, significant upfront costs of relocation and redundancy packages, plus a loss of efficiency and coherence from moving policy roles far away from Whitehall. The Government is doing things differently this time–for example, generally recruiting new starters to regional offices to fill vacancies when they arise rather than relocating existing staff relying on videoconferencing, and seeking to relocate more SCS posts in order to create more senior career pathways outside London. This approach does, however, present novel risks, such as the potential development of a two-tier departmental culture, if regional offices mainly comprise new starters who have never worked in Whitehall. A further risk is that departments may be exclusively filling vacancies to locations outside London, even where such posts require significant presence in London, in order to meet Places for Growth targets.
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Government response AI summary
The government states that departments determine which roles should be recruited in London, and review the roles that can be relocated, with a strong bias towards moving senior roles. They say departmental workforce planning ensures the right roles are being recruited in the right locations.
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17
Recommendation
Eighth Report - Where Civil Servants Wo…
Acknowledged
The Government’s claims for Places for Growth imply that it expects there to be an appreciable difference in mindset between policy officials employed in London and those in regional offices, and a corresponding change to policy. However, the responsible Minister was not able to pinpoint how policy advice drafted in …
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The Government’s claims for Places for Growth imply that it expects there to be an appreciable difference in mindset between policy officials employed in London and those in regional offices, and a corresponding change to policy. However, the responsible Minister was not able to pinpoint how policy advice drafted in a regional office would be different from that drafted in Whitehall. Even where some staff in regional offices may be more likely to have different educational and professional backgrounds, the majority of policy officials are likely to be university graduates wherever they are based given current recruitment criteria, with a certain broad shared framework of intellectual values and approaches this tends to imply. It remains unclear, both as to what changes Ministers want to see in the policy advice they receive from officials, and how the fact of basing more officials in regional Hubs will achieve these changes. The Cabinet Office should publish details of its understanding of how the location of officials influences the advice they provide, setting out how exactly it expects recruiting staff to regional offices will lead to tangible differences in policy development and improvements to the welfare of citizens and communities. (Paragraph 96) Overall conclusions
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Government response AI summary
The government says Places for Growth will give people from a wider range of backgrounds the opportunity to work in the Civil Service and that the composition of the Civil Service should be as representative of the people it serves as possible. They state a …
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