The Northern Ireland Civil Service is still short of 4,000 civil servants despite efforts to fill vacancies, the latest figures show.
There were 4,258 vacancies across the NICS’ nine departments as of the end of July, according to the just-published stats Department of Finance.
More than a third of the total – 1,559 – were at the Department for the Communities, the biggest NICS department.
A spokesperson for the department said most of its vacancies were in benefits delivery and child maintenance services, which they said was “due to a number of reasons including increased demand for our services and staff attrition”.
A DoF spokesperson said that across the NICS, 1,687 applicants are in the final stages of the recruitment process, or have accepted jobs.
“Planning is underway to fill a further 2,571 posts,” they added.
The figures come after a hiring drive to recruit 500 executive officer-level staff in May, when finance minister Conor Murphy said at the time would be used to create a “waiting list” of suitable candidates to fill further vacancies as they arise as well as filling existing roles.
The stats show the ongoing vacancy crisis – with some departments reporting they had more vacancies than staff last year – has not yet been solved.
Last year, the Department of Finance admitted the NICS needed “fundamental change” in the way it recruited staff after a Northern Ireland Audit Office showed a lack of workforce planning had led to almost 1,500 vacancies.
More than 4,000 civil servants left between 2015 and 2019, mostly through a voluntary exit scheme. By March 2019, 6.9% of roles were vacant – 1,420 in total, more than the combined workforces of the Department of Education, Department of Health and the Executive Office.
The need to plug those gaps meant the service spent £45.7m on agency staff in 2018-19 – a 155% increase on two years earlier.
The NIAO’s November report showed temporary promotions had nearly tripled in the past four years, and that in March 2019 1,844 civil servants – 8.2% of the entire NICS workforce – were temporarily promoted.