Civil service staff numbers

Who exactly are civil servants?

We define civil servants as politically impartial, appointed officials of the UK Home Civil Service, which supports the work of the UK’s central government departments. This includes agencies that employ civil servants such as executive agencies, non-ministerial departments and some non-departmental public bodies.

Our definition includes the staff of the Scottish and Welsh devolved governments, but not the staff of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, which is administratively distinct. We also include officials working in the three Whitehall-based territorial offices that manage the UK’s relationship with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.  

In this way, civil servants are defined much more narrowly than public sector workers: police, teachers, NHS staff, members of the armed forces and local government officers are not counted as civil servants.  

The data we use for our analysis of civil service staff numbers comes from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), which provides quarterly estimates of the number of civil servants employed. Unless otherwise indicated, the figures given throughout this explainer are for whole departmental groups rather than core Whitehall departments, and refer full-time equivalent (FTE) numbers rather than headcount. For more details on our handling of staff numbers data, including how we define departmental groups, see the methodology section from our latest Whitehall Monitor report. 

How many civil servants are there?

As of December 2024, there were 514,395 FTE civil servants – 635 (0.1%) fewer than in the previous quarter (Q3 2024). This is only the second quarter in which the civil service has shrunk since the EU referendum (Q2 2016). There are still 11,950 (2.4%) more civil servants than a year ago.  

The total number of civil servants has fluctuated significantly since 2010. The size of the civil service, already falling before the 2010 spending review, fell by 19% between 2010 and 2016. This meant that in June 2016, when the EU referendum took place, the civil service had a workforce of 384,230 – the smallest it had been since the Second World War, although numbers never quite reached the low of 380,000 anticipated by the 2012 Civil Service Reform Plan. ⁴ Civil Service, ‘Civil Service reform plan’, June 2012, retrieved 16 March 2023, www.gov.uk/government/publications/civil-service-reform-plan, p. 11

The civil service started growing again after the referendum (from Q3 2016) and saw increases in staff numbers for 23 consecutive quarters, surpassing its size in Q3 2010 by mid-2021. Following a slight fall in Q2 2022, numbers continued to rise until Q4 2024.

Because this growth of the civil service since 2016 was partly spurred by the preparations to leave the EU and the pandemic, there has been a notable increase in the number of policy specialists. Since March 2016, just before the EU referendum, the policy profession has grown by 17,345 staff – an increase of 105%. However, both the digital, data and technology profession and the analytics profession have also grown significantly – by 122% and 136% respectively, though the absolute increases in numbers are smaller than in the policy profession. The largest absolute increase in the number of civil servants since 2016 has been in the operational delivery profession, which has grown by more than 57,000 staff (27%).

After this significant growth in the size of the civil service, recent governments have committed to cut it. These efforts have been unsuccessful thus far, with numbers of civil servants continuing to rise. It is too early to tell whether the slight reduction in staff numbers recorded in Q4 2024 represents an exception, or the onset of a more definitive reversal of the post-2016 expansion of the civil service.  

How many civil servants are employed by each department?

There is great variation in the number of civil servants employed in different government departments.

The largest departments are often those whose work is focussed on ‘delivery’, or providing services directly to the public. The Ministry of Justice (MoJ), for example, employs tens of thousands of prison officers, and is the largest department with over 90,000 staff in total. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) administers universal credit, tax credits and pensions, and is the second largest department with over 86,000 staff. The third largest is HMRC, with almost 65,000 staff. Approximately 68% of all civil servants work in the five largest departments, or their respective agencies and non-departmental bodies: the MoJ, DWP, HMRC, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the Home Office (HO).

The five smallest departments in terms of staff are the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), HM Treasury, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). These departments can be less than a twentieth of the size of the largest departments. DCMS, for example, has 2050 staff. The Treasury has 3,130 staff, while DESNZ has 6,785.  

Departments also differ in how their staff are organised. In the larger departments, except for MoJ, most civil servants often work in the ‘core’ departments, rather than in executive agencies or non-ministerial departments that the core department oversees. By contrast, departments such as the Department for Transport (DfT), the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) have more of their staff in the bodies that they oversee than in the core department: there are 3,905 staff in MHCLG’s core department and 7,110 in the organisations it oversees, such as HM Land Registry. In the case of the MoJ, the vast majority of staff in the departmental group are employed by HM Prison and Probation Service rather than the core department.  

How have civil service numbers changed in different departments?

The fluctuation in the overall size of the civil service since 2010 is reflected in individual departments’ staffing numbers. Most departments saw their staffing fall from 2009, before rising in later years.

All but four departments now have more civil servants than they did in 2010. DCMS is almost 250% larger, while DfE has more than doubled in size. By contrast, some ‘operational’ departments which employ large numbers of staff – DWP and HMRC – employ fewer civil servants now than they did in 2010.  

The specific drivers of some of the recent expansions in the civil service – such Brexit preparations and the pandemic – are to some extent evident in departmental trends.

Before its merger with BEIS to form the Department for Business and Trade, for example, DIT more than tripled in size after its staff numbers were first reported in Q4 2016. Other departments which had significant responsibilities preparing for and implementing Brexit, such as DCMS, the Cabinet Office and Defra, also saw significant proportional growth after the referendum.

The pandemic also drove growth in the number of civil servants. As is evident in the pink chart above, between Q4 2019 and Q3 2021 DHSC saw the highest proportional growth of all departments – adding 4,220 civil servants (46%). The department then saw a trend of reducing its numbers of civil servants – perhaps due to pandemic pressures abating – though it has begun growing again recently.

As noted above, the most significant driver of growth in the civil service since 2016 has been the expansion of the operational delivery profession. This has taken place in the more frontline departments, such as MoJ and the Home Office, some of which saw significant cuts between 2010 and 2016. 

What are the latest changes to civil service staff numbers?

Data from the latest quarter (Q4 2024) show reductions in staff in 9 departments compared to the previous quarter, with MoD, DfT and the Home Office all recording decreases in staff numbers of about 0.9%.

The largest proportional increases this quarter were seen at DMCS, DBT and the Cabinet Office (3.5%, 2.5% and 2.1% respectively).

The three youngest departments, DSIT, DESNZ and DBT, have seen the largest increases in staff numbers over the last 12 months, at 23.6%, 11.4% and 9.1% respectively.