Relocation of the civil service
Where in the UK do civil servants work?

Between 2019-24, one of the Conservative governments’ top priorities for civil service reform was to relocate civil servants outside of London. The government committed to moving 22,000 officials outside of the capital, including 50% of UK-based senior civil servants – initially by 2030, which was then brought forward to 2027. The 22,000 target was first announced by the then chancellor, Rishi Sunak, in the March 2020 budget.
In July 2024 chancellor Rachel Reeves visited the Darlington Economic Campus – the flagship relocated office – and said “I know how important it is to have government jobs outside of London and the South East.” But it is currently unclear what Labour policy on relocation will be, and whether they will retain the Conservative government’s 22,000 target.
The Conservative government gave three main reasons why it wanted to relocate civil servants. They were to:
- allow talented people who do not want to live or work in London to contribute more effectively to the civil service
- shift what it perceives as civil servants’ ‘urban metropolitan’ mindsets by encouraging them to experience life in non-metropolitan areas
- economically ‘level up’ deprived areas by relocating public sector jobs to those parts of the country.
Institute for Government research suggests that, if done successfully, relocation is able to achieve all of these aims, although any economic impact is modest and localised. Our research also shows that it is not easy to build a thriving office outside of London. For more, see Settling In: Lessons from the Darlington Economic Campus, Moving Out and the Institute for Government’s written evidence on relocation to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee 4 committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/114639/pdf/ .
What is the history of civil service relocation?
The civil service’s London-centric distribution is a long-standing, well-known problem. Attempts to relocate officials around the UK is a recurring theme in the history of civil service reform.
As far back as the 1968 Fulton Report, a civil service reform plan produced by a committee chaired by Lord Fulton, the civil service was identified as being too London-centric. Fulton argued that “the Administrative Class of the Civil Service has been on easy and familiar terms…with London, less so with the regions” and that there was not ”enough awareness of how the world outside Whitehall works”. It was seen as ”desirable” for the civil service to become more geographically representative.
During the 2000s, two reports called for the civil service to become less London-centric. The 2004 Lyons Review argued that “national public sector activity is concentrated in and around London to an extent which is inconsistent with Government objectives” while the 2010 Smith Review argued there was “scope for further relocation and a continuing rebalancing of activity between central London in particular and the rest of the country…to achieve a proper balance between London and the rest of the UK.”
Michael Gove’s Ditchley Lecture, given in June 2020 while he was chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, argued that there would be a host of beneficial effects from “reduc[ing] the distance between Government and people by relocating Government decision-making centres to different parts of our United Kingdom.” June 2021’s Declaration on Government Reform called for more civil servants, including senior ones, to work outside of London.
Where do UK civil servants work?
As of March 2024, there were 542,840 people employed in the home civil service, across the UK and overseas*. Of these, 106,620 (19.6%) were based in London. The capital remains the region with by far the most civil servants, with 35,720 more than the North West, in second place.
*This figure is in headcount, and is therefore higher than the number we use in our staff numbers explainer which is in full-time equivalent staff.

Most civil servants in the UK are based in England. There are 40,245 civil servants based in Wales, of whom just over 6,000 work for the Welsh government. There are 55,205 civil servants based in Scotland, of whom just over 28,000 work for the Scottish government.
The data in the rest of this explainer excludes civil servants working for the Scottish and Welsh government, and those based overseas, matching the UK government’s methodology for evaluating the dispersal of officials across the country.
What civil service jobs are there in different parts of the country?

The majority of senior civil servants work in London. The capital has approximately 10 times more senior civil servants than Scotland (the region with the next highest number of them).
However, the overall proportion of UK-based senior civil servants that work in London fell from 68% in 2020 to 61% in 2024. This demonstrates progress on the ambition for 50% of UK-based senior civil servants to be located outside the capital by 2030.
The regional distribution of civil servants in Grades 6 and 7 is marked by a similar concentration in London although again, the proportion in the capital has reduced over the past few years. Civil servants at lower grades are more evenly distributed across the UK.

The mix of different civil service professions also varies by region. Cross-departmental specialist roles – including policy, economics and HR – make up over one in five civil service jobs, but constitute almost half of the London-based civil service work force. London is the most policy-focused region, with almost 20% of London-based civil servants belonging to the policy profession. The region with the next highest proportion of policy officials is Wales, where 6% of civil servants are in policy roles.

Overall, 60% of all policy-focused civil servants are based in London – substantially down from 67% in 2023, but still reflecting the London-centric nature of the profession.
How has the number of civil servants in each region changed?
In February 2023, the government announced that it was over halfway to the goal of moving 22,000 civil servants outside of London. It is unclear how progress towards this target was calculated, with a select committee report suggesting it referred to the number of new roles created outside London, rather than the number of London roles moved outside the capital. But it reflected the increasing proportion of civil service roles outside of London, particularly between March 2022 and March 2023.

In 2024, once again growth in almost every region outstripped that in London.

But this progress must be set in the context of a civil service that has become substantially more London-centric since 2010. As the civil service contracted from 2010–16, all regions in England saw a deeper proportional decline in staff numbers than London. During the post-Brexit expansion, London bounced back more strongly, and from a higher base.
This means that, in total, the number of civil servants in London grew by 23% over the last 14 years, the largest growth of any region. The other regions where staff numbers grew are Wales (16% growth), North West (9% growth), Yorkshire and the Humber (6%), West Midlands (6%), Northern Ireland (5%), and South West (2%). The deepest staff reductions since 2010 can be found in the East of England (25%), Scotland (18%) and the South East (16%).

- Topic
- Civil service
- Department
- Cabinet Office
- Publisher
- Institute for Government