To wonder why civil service haters don't understand that cutting 10,000 jobs is going to hurt everyone

[Everythingisnumbersnow]

I can't believe Labour is doing what they're doing

10000 across the country isn’t really a huge number - not an economy-shaking one.

These quangos mushroom: NHS England will have a IT dept, a finance dept, a large HR dept, a handful (at least) of Diversity officers, and a multitude of other non-jobs all to service just itself.

When I worked in local govt I was appalled at the proliferation of jobs. One person would have a secretary, a diary secretary, a filing clerk, and sometimes the whole lot of them would have nothing to do! There’s nothing like spending other people’s (ie taxpayers’) money.

A friend works in Local Government and often comments that because there’s a good amount of staff, they lack the nimbleness you need to get things done because there’s so many people to get decisions past. I don’t want people to be overworked but I agree with her that sometimes a bit of having to do things yourself gets more work done. Husband is an outgoing civil servant and his team is awash with people. Another friend is a civil servant who often has eight meetings a day. I’ve just gone from a big organisation to a small one and my output has increased massively because we can make decisions quickly.

…working in the CS myself …

There will be multiple people who will want to go, they will be nearing retirement, and will want to access thier pension

There will be people happy with their payoff, who have another job lined up, or plan on changing career.

There will be people who will be Tuped back into thier Home Ministry, because of specialist skills and knowledge

There are thousands of vacancies in the Civil Service, so some will be straight redeployments.
There is a big push to retrain CS into Digital Professions, to help save on the £1bn a year spent on Digital Consultants and Contractors, so that will be on offer

The number of forced redundancies will be minimal.

I work for a ALB … can’t wait to move back into out Ministry.

I hope that the layers of management will be cut but more employed to do the actual processing of work. I work adjacent to the Home office, which has been a basket case for years. A colleague of mine said the they have doubled the staff (2 to 4) in the department he deals with and he's finally getting replies to queries, so fingers crossed this will happen.

I was hoping that OP would return and explain why 10,000 CS losing jobs was more concerning than similar job losses in the private sector.

Eg This says BT plans to cut 55k jobs worldwide https://businessplus.ie/jobs/bt-jobs-worldwide/

We know from previous financial events like 2008 that what happens overseas affects other countries.

My neighbour was made redundant from the CS aged 52 -has been reviving her very comfortable pension since then -22 years so far… How on earth is that sustainable?

Nail on the head. We need to stop these gravy trains.

Its truly shocking the posts on this thread. I thought I had seen some lazy slackers when in a previous role working with CS but it seems to be rife.

I also had expeience with local authorities - I lasted 18 months before I asked for a transfer. This local authoirty (very large one outside of London) was a disgrace. For me it was the cast of 1000's who seemed to want to attend meetings. Did very little bar bettitle the person who was presenting. I caught them out a few times because they had literally done no background on the meeting they were attending.

The redudancy payments for many of these people will be huge. Especially people who have been slackers and biding time for years and years and years!

I know - the meetings! I met a person a few years ago who told me they had just been hired as an “obesity officer” at the council. “So what are your plans for reducing obesity?” I ask. “Well,” person prickles, “First we have to appoint a steering group to form protocols…” I couldn’t help it, but persisted with asking just how obesity was to be tackled, and they just repeated like an automaton about working parties etc. Probably to this day they are still scheduling meetings to hire people to schedule those meetings…

ou could cut the Civil service in half and nobody would notice. It’s absolutely full of dead wood.

And yes, I’ve worked for them.

In my department there was one senior manager managing two middle managers who in turn each managed one member of staff. Nobody can argue that that is productive.

And the amount of people I knew who left to go and work in the private sector and came back five minutes later because the workloads were unsustainable was unreal.

I work agency side and mostly with private sector companies.

I've recently done some work with a public sector department and dear God, not a single thing could be done without multiple consultations with the 'steering committee', which was far too large and someone was always out on leave at crucial moments.

I hasten to add they were lovely people and in many ways great to to work with, but it is not an environment set up to work efficiently.

I worked with an environmental charity for several years and many of the people running it had been, or still were, public servants.

Consultation papers, task and finish groups blah blah blah - all talk, no resolution and no action.

Thing is they are also on gold plated pension schemes which are costing billions. Maybe look at revisting that?

There are very very few of these schemes left in the private sector.

Yes I agree, and I am CS too.

Usually they achieve this by just not replacing people who leave.

Also it sounds like a big number but it’s pretty small in the context of how many people are employed in the CS in total, which is around 548,000.

I don’t think there is a problem with saying it has to be possible to get rid of people in accordance with UK employment law. They’re not just going to chuck out a bunch of people for no reason.

This.

It's an interesting insight into the public sector mindset though. "I understand a bit about economics but not the bit about actual productivity."

Reeves's economic policies are set to cut a swathe through the private sector with soaring costs of employment, soaring energy costs, cast iron workers rights making employers nervous, and yet the whole country will grind to a halt if we sack 10,000 civil servants.

Very interesting reading from the people who work in or with the CS- please keep them coming.

This is is the case in my sector and it’s not Civil Service or Council. Completely ridiculous overpaid middle managers.

Standard practise I'm afraid, MaturingCheeseball. It was exactly the same with the SS director I was once PA for - six months in the job and all she'd done was arrange meetings to discuss what "consultations" would be needed and appoint yet more staff to "support" a task which wasn't actually being done

That was the one where I worked 5 mornings a week which she clearly didn't need, so I suggested 3 mornings instead
The answer: "Ooooo noooo; all the other directors have a PA every day so I must have one too"

Absolutely this!

@Everythingisnumbersnow , there are lots of available jobs outside the civil service.

300,000 jobs expected to be lost due to NI rises in April. That puts 10,000 CS jobs into context.

www.cityam.com/more-than-300000-businesses-plan-job-cuts-as-reeves-budget-starts-to-bite/

Local Authorities are worse than civil service in my experience.

Unlike private sector job losses these will still save the state money as they were paying wages and huge pension contributions and now the worst they will pay is benefits. Get on with it Kier.

@Puzzledandpissedoff - I feel your pain!

There is terrible empire-building in some sectors. Yes, the status race of needing a PA and the onward march of the HR department whose tentacles interfere with anything and everything.