Select committee: Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee
Conclusion 15
Eighth Report - Where Civil Servants Work: Planning for the future of the Government’s estates
Published 27 Jul 2023
Paragraph 94
Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee Planning for the future of the Government’s estates All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
The previous system of Government Offices for the English Regions received some criticism at the time for not sufficiently doing bottom-up policy-making for the regions they were based in. However, there was at least a comprehensive structure in Where Civil Servants Work: Planning for the future of the Government’s estates 51 place, in which the same government departments were represented in each region, as a scaled down version of Whitehall for local areas. The Government’s current approach to the Places for Growth and Government Hubs programmes is much more haphazard. Without a clearer rationale for why a particular function has been relocated to a particular regional Hub, the Government increases the risk both that its programmes will fail substantially to influence policy-making and that a future government may reorganise or reverse what it has done.
From: Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, Eighth Report - Where Civil Servants Work: Planning for the future of the Government’s estates (HC 793), paragraph 94, 27 July 2023
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 18 October 2023.
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The Government states that it supports enhanced transparency and has "accepted recommendations where appropriate", while pointing to existing mechanisms on others and leaving some decisions with individual departments.
- On programme documentation, the Government says it "will publish relevant programme documentation" for Places for Growth and the Plan for London, and "will refresh the appropriate pages" to include purpose, objectives and critical success factors.
- On Cabinet meetings outside London, it states that planning must balance regional benefits with ministerial parliamentary availability and taxpayers' money, and that "for security reasons" it does not announce when and where meetings will take place.
- On civil service headcount, it says the policy of reducing numbers by 91,000 FTE "would not be pursued" and that any reductions are "for individual departments to determine".
- On the Government Property Agency's value for money, it states the Agency delivers "excellent value for money" and is undertaking a benefits review against its original business case, with no external review commitment stated.