How has the civil service changed over the past year? How have departments grown or shrunk? What kind of work are officials doing? And what challenges are coming down the track?
The Institute for Government sets out to answer these questions, and more, in its annual Whitehall Monitor report. CSW listened in to the first of a series of webinars on the findings of this year’s report, which takes a closer look at the size and shape of the civil service.
Here are our top takeaways.
Growth in headcount since 2016 needs to be addressed
The Whitehall Monitor 2025 stocktake finds a continued growth in the size of the civil service and that the civil service has now expanded in all but one quarter since the EU referendum in 2016.
Jack Worlidge, senior researcher at the Institute for Government, said it is understandable that the number of officials needed to increase in the period since the Brexit referendum, as the UK took on responsibilities that were previously carried out by the EU, and then faced significant challenges such as the Covid pandemic. But, he said, “there is a real question on why that hasn’t unwound”, adding that “growth has continued since then without a clear plan or rationale”.
Alex Thomas, IfG programme director, backed this point, saying: “The policy profession has more than doubled over the last eight or nine years. I don’t think there is twice as much policy work that needs to be done.”
The steep headcount growth since 2016 led to jobs being added “almost entirely in the mid-ranking and senior levels”, Worlidge said, whereas “when the civil service shrank between 2009-2016 the losses were mostly in junior grades”. Consequently, since 2016, the workforce has become far more weighted towards middle and senior ranks, changing the shape of the civil service in a significant way.
The increased headcount at grade 6 and 7 was referred to as a “horrific statistic” by Liz Tolcher, a workforce transformation expert from PA Consulting. Tolcher described this change as “a 121% increase since 2010”.
The Whitehall Monitor report expands upon this detail, stating that the 121% increase in the number of officials at grade 6 and 7 since 2010 refers to headcount across the civil service as a whole. The report says the increase at grade 6 and 7 in this period has risen by more than 200% in the Home Office, DHSC, DCMS and DfE, while in the Cabinet Office the increase is 422%.
The panel suggested that “really crude headcount cuts” would not work. Thomas said these cuts are often done through voluntary redundancy schemes which incentivise the wrong behaviour. “You end up keeping the more expensive people because of the way the grade structures work," he said.
Splitting the role of cabinet secretary and head of the civil service might reduce workforce planning challenges
The panel discussed how hard it is to carry out strategic workforce planning when the civil service as an institution is so fragmented. Echoing a key recommendation from the 2023 Maude review, the point was made that managing the civil service is a huge and challenging role, which needs the singular focus of one individual.
“We talk about this as if there was somebody really running the civil service,” Thomas said. He argued that under current arrangements, addressing workforce issues would need “a collective commitment from the cab sec and all the perm secs working together over the course of a parliament to really have a focus on these things”. He added: “It’s not easy.”
His arguments were recently echoed by former cabinet secretary and head of the civil service Simon Case who told CSW that he was in favour of splitting the role, saying that being responsible for the “health and direction” of half a million people, while also being chief implementer and adviser, was “too difficult”.
Emma Norris, deputy director of the IfG, who chaired the debate, asked whether there were any signs that government was listening to calls for the cabinet secretary role to be split. Thomas seemed sceptical, suggesting that an incoming cabinet secretary might not want to “hive off a section of the job to somebody else”.
Civil servants are frustrated about duplication of effort
Referring to the research behind the Whitehall Monitor report, and to anecdotal evidence, Thomas made the argument that there is a problem with duplication of work in the civil service. Some of that duplication is between policy teams and operational teams on the frontline, Thomas suggested, while some is between policy teams and the centre. Civil servants themselves are understandably frustrated by this.
Expanding on concerns about duplication and institutional memory that have been pointed out by government commentators before, Thomas said: “There is something about de-duplicating and being really laser-focused on the functions that only that area of the civil service can do, and not having that instinct to see a problem and throw resource at it as the first response.”
AI adoption will impact skills as well as roles
Asked about the likely impact of AI in the Labour government’s workforce plan – to be produced at the same time as the Spending Review – Tolcher picked out jobs such as benefit fraud applications and certain court processes as areas where AI might “cut through the time and effort”.
Referring back to the increased headcount in policy professionals since 2016, Worlidge made the point – also backed by leaders within government – that AI might change the skills needed by government policymakers, which might in turn change the shape of the workforce.
Thomas picked out a statistic from the report showing that the number of people working in the digital profession has increased by around 120%. “At the moment of history we’re in, it seems entirely reasonable for the civil service to want to lean into people with data and digital skills,” he said.