Recommendation 14

Recruiting staff to regional offices has the potential to open up the civil service as a career to a wider number of people. This can have benefits both for civil servants (enabling them to pursue a career in government without necessarily having to move to London) and for government policy (if it leads to greater understanding within departments about the differing needs of local communities). The Government’s thinking about how to achieve these benefits appears unclear, however. In particular, there is a risk that in viewing certain communities outside London as being more representative of the country as a whole, the Government is stereotyping communities outside the capital as all being essentially the same and all being radically different to the varied communities in London, overriding local differences in needs and interests. It remains to be seen how HM Treasury’s Darlington Economic Campus will improve policy-making for the remainder of the country.