Civil Service location frustration

[FoxHedgehogBadger]

Not an AIBU or question, just a rant really.
I’m civil service, London-based, looking for a new job at the moment.
There’s a big drive to push civil service jobs out of London, which I do understand the reasoning behind.
Here’s my big frustration: So many jobs are advertised, with the location given as something like “Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Leeds, Manchester, Milton Keynes, Newcastle, Sheffield”.
So basically, they are not trying to build a team or department in a specific place, you are going to work in a local hub office, probably sitting without any direct colleagues.
So if the job can actually be done anywhere, why not just let me apply to do that in London!

At the other end of the scale, I have seen a job I fancy with an ALB within the same department as mine but they have said that it can only be based at a limited number of locations, the nearest of which is 3.5 hours away by train. It’s frustrating because someone from that ALB works in the same department office as me, but apparently this job cannot be done from our office.

I am going to contact them to ask if they will consider applications based at smaller regional offices. Otherwise they’re significantly limiting their pool of applicants.

I possibly work in one of the jobs you have seen.
Very strict on the 60% attendance but incredibly flexible otherwise. Apart from when it can’t be!

My mentor was a child of immigrants and she was actually the one that raised it, she went to Oxbridge, her face looks different to the crowd, but she has the way of speaking that is recognised and familiar in the CS. Literally every female SCS in my org (last year, may have changed this year) was Oxbridge, but not the men. Men are allowed a lower bar of course

Appreciate you might be able to separate class and Oxbridge, I know not everyone who goes is middle class, but usually by the time you’ve been, you’ve learned to speak and meld with middle class professionals which the CS loves. CS SCS has always skewed towards Oxbridge.

And of course there’s not necessarily anything wrong with that perse, I appreciate a good education is a pretty fair bar to have in public service lol, but considering we work for the public it does create skewed policy I think. I’m pleased we’re seeing a growth in apprenticeships into the CS.

The cost of having an office in London is significantly higher than the cost in other locations. The CS dept where I work doesn’t advertise many London posts as we’re moving to a smaller office so less desk space available.

I know plenty of sole breadwinners in GLS. That's about cutting your cloth surely?

Errr it would be a >75% pay cut so not much cloth left. Willing to bet that the people you’re thinking of either benefited from family help for eg deposit, bought in London more than 10 years ago, have no kids or all 3.

No. But many live outside London
There's heaps of people in GLS that don't come from wealth

They don’t need to have come from wealth to have benefited from cheaper property prices and/or no tuition fees and/or lower cost of living when younger. I find it hard to believe that there are significant numbers of the people you are describing who are under 40. Things have massively changed in a short space of time.

A long commute to never see my family doesn’t really give me the work life balance I’m looking for, if there is an 80% in-office requirement (the case for all the jobs I’ve seen recently). It’s not really sustainable any more for normal people.

Definitely have staff under 40 who have been to university and still paying down their student loans and have not benefited from any family money. Most live pretty frugally in rented flat shares - home made breakfast and packed lunch and walk, run or cycle to the office. They usually buy a home when they couple up, by which time they will have been promoted too.

Think of our security staff, cleaners and caterers on lower pay, not all of them live in social housing.

Agree. Same in our team
They might not have big cars and London homes but they make it work .

It's ridiculous to say people can't live on a public sector lawyer salary.

Do they have 2 kids in nursery costing £3.6k a month? No.

If you need to live “pretty frugally” in a flat share in your 30s to afford to work in the civil service in London something has gone badly wrong.

I’m saying a public sector lawyer salary does not support a family of 4 in London. It absolutely does not!

My department has many locations including London (both Central and a bit out). Our vacancies are advertised everywhere that the buildings aren't full - the London buildings often are.

You have a legal right to apply to be a homeworker from day 1 if the role says suitable for contractual homeworker. They don't have to give it to you but they do need a very good reason and rarely risk going to a tribunal.

I think you underestimate how many jobs and teams are still concentrated in london and viewed through a London lens. There are so many more jobs advertised in london, or, cunningly have necessary appointments in person in london. I lived in london for 20 years, I have a choice of 3 limited departments in my location and essentially can’t progress. I am not the breadwinner and SEO is 43.6k!

I worked in private sector in london for 20 years and only joined CS a few years ago.

at the end of the day CS represents the whole of the 4 nations of the U.K. and its policies need to be able to reflect that. Only today I was trying to implement a programme the parameters of which were dreamt up by a 20 something London-born, london-raised colleague from the London half of our team who is very confident and loathed being challenged. She will def be scs as incredibly driven and able but nothing we could tell her that her stance was wrong for this region but her CS writing skills are brilliant and she got it past our london-born, london-raised minister. Stakeholder in despair when I spoke to them as it is a policy meant for our region that would work brilliantly - for London type organisations- but not at all for our rural ones!

It’s a CS / london thing. If you have a vacancy you have to argue a business case to have london as an option. Only some roles will justify it

Do you not like her? You post is showing both an ageist and regional bias.

And you seem to have missed the point of the OP.

I think it’s fair to say that a lot of policy is drawn up and directed by people who have no experience of operational delivery. Maybe that’s just my dept but it makes life very difficult for those trying to implement those policies.

I do like her. I think she is inexperienced and lacks diversity of thought to be able to create policy effectively for people who live life in a very different way to people who live in london. And her attitude is very like, well it would work here so why not there. I also think that by being able to hop around a lot of available jobs in varied departments, people can become more senior quite quickly in london and also, as others have pointed out, speak in a way that much of a senior leadership that also is concentrated in london, understands and feels comfortable with, and so you have people with not much experience making far ranging policies for places that have ways of living far away from the way life is lived in london.

Most Civil Service offices are more like factories if you aren't customer facing, they just lump as many staff as they can in a location.

As I mentioned, they usually buy a home when they marry or find a permanent partner. Then, they have children, but by then they have two salaries and of course they have to pay for childcare so they can both work. Quite normal for one part of a couple to be a Civil Servant and one in the private sector, so you need to count the childcare against both salaries.

Not sure if you’re deliberately missing the point or just haven’t read the full thread.

My point is that a CS salary is not enough to support a family in London where the civil servant is the breadwinner. You seem to be saying it’s only sustainable where the other half of the couple works in the private sector- ie my point entirely, thank you for confirming.

I am a Londoner, but I have lived and worked outside London and DH has worked abroad too. I’m not sure exactly what you mean about people outside London living in a very different way from those in London. In my experience there is a lot of diversity in who lives in London and how they choose to live; the same in many places elsewhere. Surely your challenge was to explain in detail why you considered the policy wouldn’t land well.

Outside of m25 is no culture, lack of shopping etc. Are you new to MN. Thought everyone on here knew that 😁
We are just all slumin' it out here.

On a serious note. Cognitive diversity which may also be influenced by where you live, of course, is really quite important diversity. So if you come from central london or outskirts of Leeds, it can make difference in view on some things. Someone who knows nothing outside of central london will for example not understand why people need cars elsewhere. Just use public transport? As shown on MN really quite often too.

I met way too many cwntral-ishLondon based people who were gobsmacked that they can't get uber in the middle of nowhere in a national park....

Indeed.