Civil service employment rose by 3,000 in the three months to March, the first rise in headcount in a year, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics.
ONS’s quarterly publication of public sector employment found the Whitehall staff count stood at 419,000 in March 2017, which is a return to the level in March 2016 following three quarters in which the headcount stayed steady at 416,000.
The figures come after the National Audit Office, the Institute for Government and civil service unions warned that the civil service would need additional staff to deal with the impact of Brexit as well as continuing with day-to-day government work.
The ONS highlighted that civil service employment last peaked at 566,000 in June 2005. Since then it has been generally falling but the rate of decrease has lessened, with little change since the summer of 2015.
Overall, the entire public sector employed 5.4m employees first quarter of 2017, down 7,000 (0.1%) on December 2016 and 20,000 (0.4%) on March 2016.
Public sector employment has been falling for the last 7 years, with around one million fewer employees in the public sector compared with the peak level of 6.4 million in September 2009.
Just under three million people were employed across all of central government in the first three months of 2017, up 20,000 on the previous three months and the highest since comparable records began in 1999, according to the ONS. This is due to an increase in employment in academies and the NHS, which are both counted within the central government total.
Local government employment has fallen for the 14th consecutive quarter to reach 2.123m. Some of this decrease is caused by schools converting to academies, so that their staff are counted as central government employees.