Sir Humphrey ‘faces seismic change’

CIVIL servants are ‘woefully unprepared’ for the ‘seismic’ changes coming once Britain has left the EU, the architect of Boris Johnson’s manifesto has claimed.

Rachel Wolf, the co-author of the Conservative Party’s pitch to voters, said Mr Johnson and his chief aide Dominic Cummings want to run ‘the most dynamic state in the world’.

Age-old practices will be axed and the civil service will be modernised from top to bottom, she said. Many officials ‘cannot believe the PM and Mr Cummings mean business’, she claimed, and ‘as a result, they seem woefully unprepared for what is coming’.

Under the reforms, civil servants could be forced to sit regular exams to prove they are fit to work in Whitehall. Miss Wolf, who has her own communications firm Public First, said the Government will also end the ‘merry-go-round’ of officials changing jobs every 18 months.

Critics claim the revolving-door policy prevents civil servants from building up expertise and also allows them to escape the consequences of their mistakes.

Miss Wolf said anyone staying in the same job for longer than 18 months is currently seen to have ‘stalled’ in a culture that ‘kills institutional memory and expertise’. Writing in The Daily Telegraph, she said plans for merging, creating and abolishing departments represented just a ‘tiny fraction’ of what was planned.

Such changes are likely to be implemented in the spring once the UK has left the EU.