Recommendation 12

Co-locating officials from different departments within the same regional Hubs potentially offers the opportunity to create collaborative teams, generating new insights and leading to more joined up policy-making. At the same time, past experience suggests that problems may arise from the fact that different departments are individual employers, with their own pay scales for officials below the Senior Civil Service grades. We disagree with the Minister’s assessment that there are no risks to consider here. Instead, we believe this has the potential to both lead to tensions where staff from different departments are co-located, and cause practical issues where staff seek to move between departments within Hubs in pursuit of improved pay and conditions. To help realise the wider potential of the Government Hubs programme, the Cabinet Office and GPA should promote case studies which demonstrate the practical benefits of staff from different departments working together within regional offices. The GPA should report on such case studies, highlighting the practical impacts on policy-making, in its annual reports. The Cabinet Office should also monitor the extent to which staff within regional Hubs transfer between departments, investigating both the reasons for it and the level of disruption this causes to departmental business.