Cabinet Office stuffed with 700 HR jobs
ABOUT 700 civil servants in a single government department work in human resources, ministers have discovered.
The Cabinet Office officials do not just work on issues in the department but across government, covering areas such as pay rewards and performance management.
However, individual departments also have their own personnel teams, raising questions about whether there is unnecessary duplication.
Earlier this month, Boris Johnson ordered ministers to reduce the size of the Civil Service by 90,000 jobs – about one in five roles.
One source working on the Cabinet Office’s attempt to shrink the Civil Service said the role HR teams could have in slowing the cuts drive was a “live concern”. Steve Barclay, Mr Johnson’s chief of staff, has ordered an audit into the Cabinet Office’s workforce.
The “deep dives”, as they have been dubbed internally, are an attempt to work out exactly how many people work in the department and on what.
The Spectator first reported that Mr Barclay’s audit found that about 700 people work in HR in the department.
It also found 80 people are working on the Cop UN climate change conferences, even though the summit ended in November. The UK retains the presidency throughout this year.
One person working on the Civil Service cuts drive noted fears that large HR departments could slow down the rate at which changes can be made.
“It is a live concern. They could have an ability to slow things down,” the source told The Daily Telegraph. “People
have been talking a lot about trade unions. They are less powerful than they used to be but there are always institutional blockers in all their forms.”
John O’connell, of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, said: “With the tax burden at a record high and the PM promising to get to grips with government spending, we need to see serious efforts to trim Britain’s bloated bureaucracy.”
But Garry Graham, deputy general secretary of Prospect – a trade union that represents civil servants – noted the unit had been the creation of Lord Maude, the Tory former Cabinet Office minister who drove through reforms.
He said: “The bringing together of Civil Service HR into the Cabinet Office was an initiative of Francis Maude to centralise expertise in HR to serve the rest of the Civil Service.
“It was designed as an efficiency measure. It was created to avoid duplication across departments and agencies, so the wheel was not being reinvented. It advises government departments and agencies on issues like pay reward, performance management, diversity and inclusion initiatives. A whole range of things.”