Counting down but not enough? The latest civil service staff numbers
The government will miss its targets, but there still has been significant change.
Today, the Office for National Statistics released the latest data for public sector employment, which report Civil Service staff numbers as of the end of September 2014. Petr Bouchal looks at what it tells us about the Civil Service, and how it relates to the government’s efforts to save money. He finds that the government is off track to meet its aspiration to downsize the Civil Service to some 380,000 full time equivalents (FTE) by 2015. But there has been a significant amount of change nonetheless. In the four years since the 2010 Spending Review, most departments have reduced their staff numbers by between 15% and 30%.