You can’t get a driving licence, driving test or a passport

[daimbarsatemydogsbone]

So Boris plans to cut 90000 civil service jobs.

How does he think this will help?

He needs to get them all back to the office.
I only finally received a driving licence when I put an official complaint in.

Won't be able to get them all back to the office once they've been fired.

I cannot even comprehend this number of people who work in public service being fired. The country will fall to shit.

My husband applied to get his licence back (voluntarily surrendered for medical reasons) last September. When he finally (after weeks of trying) got through to DVLA they confirmed it had been received but couldn't say when it would be processed.

DH works in the civil service, his entire department is back in the office and has been for quite some time and they have worked thriughout the pandemic. However their contracts were changed during lockdown to state that they have the option to work from home for around 40% of their working pattern (approx two days a week). This enabled his department to save money by having less workspaces.

The reason there are delays with passports, driving licenses, etc is because - despite headlines about "bloat" and cutting jobs - there aren't enough staff. They cut so many jobs during the peak of austerity that simply weren't refilled and this is the result, not enough staff to deal with demand.

Driving tests are delayed due to covid backlog as so many tests were not able to be carried out, again there is not enough staff to deal with the increased demand.

Further cuts will make it even worse so get ready for it to be far more shit in future.

Just imagine if 91000 people were to be made redundant in the private sector - in the recent past the Conservative government would have paid these companies not to make these redundancies!

Remember the UK government's response to the 800 P&O jobs. They are doing this x100. Hypocrites.

It is catastrophic for those people involved and their families. Houses will be repossessed on a vast scale.

Brexit is very far from done. UK-International trade is in crisis, both due to continuing Brexit and Ukraine/Russia issues.

All areas of the UK public sector need more investment not less. The UK public infrastructure - literally and figuratively - is crumbling.

This will further worsen the impending economic crisis. These people losing their jobs will be a huge burden on the benefits system and will lead to economic issues in all areas that they would have been spending money. The scale is vast.

Shit, I have to send my new passport to the home office to get the settled status uploaded to it and I am wondering now when I will receive it back.

I work in the civil service and the waste and inefficiency is staggering - the axe could fall a lot harder in my opinion. I’ve worked across several departments and some of the jobs for life brigade who are rewarded for doing literally the bare minimum makes me sick. I was private sector for quite a few years and the difference between the two is night and day.

How can they go back to office if he’s fired them?

I thought they were going to achieve the 'cut' by having no new appointments. I didn't think they were actually letting people go.

But, god, JRM on all the media this morning, he is such a pompous toad.

But, god, JRM on all the media this morning, he is such a pompous toad

Johnson must be very very desperately clinging by his fingertips to power if he needs to give into JRM on this. There is a very good reason he has never been allowed anywhere near power by successive Tory governments.

Karma will get you JRM (and BJ).

It is completely ridiculous. If they want to eek money out of the civil service, sell off some of the land and buildings that they have. Making people redundant will not save any money at all!

I can’t speak for the passport office or DVSA but in my department the majority of the business are back (despite certain hacks in the media saying otherwise) and the backlog is almost back to pre pandemic levels. This is from a workforce that is completely on its knees. Covid is still rife within the business and sickness and absence levels are high. We need more staff not fewer!

I know some people seem to think that the civil service is all £60k p/a and golden pensions but in my department that couldn’t be further from the truth. The lowest grade in my department has now been brought up to minimum wage. The next grade up is on £20k p/a and the next one is £24k p/a. These are not high paid roles and are often staffed by women in the lowest 3 grades. These people are struggling as it is. Dangling a sword over their heads to make them do more with less is absolutely disgraceful.

In 2004 there were 534,000 fte civil servants.

By June 2016 there were 382,000 fte.

Today there are 452,000 fte.

They're not cutting excess jobs, there are no excess jobs, what they'll be cutting is services.

It's a bit like them saying they're going to recruit and train 20,000 extra police officers without mentioning the fact that reason we need 20,000 new officers is because of the 23,500 they got rid of.

Public health related: A lot of extra people were hired on temp contracts, covid-related. Their contracts are finishing in September/October 2022 anyway. These contract ends will be hailed as part of "cutting" CS workforce.

I also think it's red meat to base mostly gesture not reality: the published numbers will be manipulated to only count people who left and not count new hires. And/or some of the same departments/services will continue but contracted out to private sector, not officially counted as CS workforce. Yes Minister shenanigans !

Remember 2019 election pledges? Google says there are 14k more officers in 2022 than there were in 2020. Not 20k more.

Also... estimated savings by cutting CS workforce by 90k persons = £3.5 bln/year.

HoC Library estimated tax evasion cost treasury £5.5 bln in 2020-2021.

How could we go about catching the tax evaders: oh yeah, need civil servants to organise that. <shrug>

I'm staggered that Boris thinks the solution to this economic crisis is to make 90,000 people unemployed?!?!?!?! WTAF???

When's the next General Election....?

Brexit - the gift that keeps on giving.

According to some reports the growth in the Civil Service post 2016 is caused by leaving the EU.

Many of the jobs now done by this bulge used to be done centrally in Europe or, as we were members of the EU, didn't need to be done.

So as we’re still out of it those jobs still need to be done? So it will be those back office jobs that will go/ not filled.

Those back office jobs that ‘don’t matter’. Like those back office jobs that went in Police forces that have caused inefficiency etc etc.

And it won't be senior civil servants on high salaries, it won't be any of the government's pet cronies, it'll be people at the bottom of the ladder. It'll the AA bands the AO bands, and the O bands - all people on a starting salary of £24,000 or less

Varies massively from department to department. In some people work incredibly hard, lots of unpaid overtime, low pay - particularly junior civil servants in the London area many of whom struggle to make ends meet while paying rent, commuting costs and student loans from not particularly good starting salaries.

But the DVLA is dominated by the Public and Commercial Services Union which has been using Covid as an excuse to work to rule. Hard left, pro Corbyn their agenda is overtly political. So I would not be sorry to see them privatised. Privatisation will probably cost more in the longer term though.

I used to work in the Civil Service and of course there is some slack in the system. But when I moved to the private sector I tripled my salary overnight and did not find myself working any harder than I had done before.

🙄you realise that your driving license wasn’t delayed because civil servants are sitting at home watching daytime tv? Many are working from the office anyway. And those who are working from hone are doing so because it makes very little difference to their day to day work and ability to carry out their job (just like many private sector workers now!) In face, lots of wfh civil servants are working longer hours due
to not having to commute every day.

But good to know the propaganda is working.

HMRC timescales are so long mostly because of the sheer volume of mistakes their staff make in the first place. A huge number of the phone calls and letters they receive will be from people trying to correct mistakes made by HMRC.

I'm an accountant and have seen the competence levels of HMRC staff fall drastically over the years. If they did the job properly in the first place, they'd receive a mere fraction of the number of calls/letters they have to deal with.

Silly Civl Servants, performatively working from home and not buying the Daily Mail and a Pret sandwich and jeopardising the economy then being made redundant to save the economy. Putting aside the clearly political actions by the Civil Servants, they are clearly Schrodinger's economic actors, simultanrously existant and key when they are there and key when they no longer are there. 10%? is a fortunately round figure after presumably lots of analysis Dept by dept..

Yeah cos all the evidence is that productivity goes down when you do that

There's always one brain dead comment like this isn't there.

To provide some contrast, I sent my driving license off on a Monday and had it back by the following Tuesday.

Sent my passport off and had it back within a couple of weeks.

Sent two DLA renewal forms and both were processed the week before the deadline.

Sent a Carers Allowance form and it was processed within two weeks.

Renewed my Tax Credits and it was processed in three days.

Is it a straight forward redundancy scheme (e.g. z weeks pay per x years service with y weeks notice) or a ‘softer’ voluntary redundancy scheme?

I assume that a tranche of civil servants are approaching the ‘sweet spot’ where they can take their civil service pension earlier than the state pension age & offset the actuarial hit with a lump sum from a voluntary redundancy scheme.

No doubt, the HR boffins at Whitehall have crunched the numbers for such a scheme & built an offer that allows a tranche of employees a soft exit & a swift cut in overall salary bill with a reduced risk of industrial action.

Who knows the impact on services?