Mistake to Move Senior Civil Servants out of London?

There is much to be welcomed in the recent announcements that:

• there is to be a new civil service apprenticeship scheme,

• there are to be 12,000 fewer civil servants in London by 2032,

• 50% of Fast Stream roles will be outside London by 2030, and

• 50% of the Senior Civil Service (SCS) will be employed outside London by the same date.

It is expensive to employ staff in London, and the capital is markably different to the rest of the country in very many ways, leading to skewed and politically-insensitive decision-making.

A significant number of fast streamers and the SCS already work outside London - in the tax and environment departments, for instance. So I don’t know whether the 50% targets are mere spin or amount to more substantial change. If the latter, though, I worry that the SCS decision will seriously damage the UK’s policy-making ability at a time when it is already hardly at its best.

There are many different ways of arranging the relationship between ministers and their senior advisers. The UK’s “Westminster Model” may have had its faults but it was, for most of the last century, regarded as one of the best, if not the best, in the world. Its key strength was the post-WW1 realisation that the optimal relationship between civil servants and Ministers was one of mutual interdependence, with Ministers providing authority and officials providing expertise¹. This implied a close, confidential, “no secrets” and trusting relationship between the ministerial team and its 4,000 or so senior officials. Ministers cannot even have a meeting in, or make a phone call from, their offices without officials listening in and reporting it to their colleagues.

Regular readers of this Substack will however know that I have chronicled the steady degradation of this relationship over recent years. Ministers have grown more critical of officials who have themselves become less expert and less confident - moving from job to job and often from department to department every two or three years. Salaries have fallen markedly in real terms and the resultant grade inflation means that there are now over 7,000 in the SCS, thus diluting the intimacy of the relationship with ministers².

I cannot see, against this background, how the further separation of ministers from their principal advisers is going to help the quality of UK policy-making. It is difficult enough to ‘speak truth to power’³ when discussing a difficult subject face to face. It’s near impossible over the phone or Zoom/Teams.

Much the same applies when an inevitable crisis arises. Crises require rapid team building which is hard, verging on impossible, when the team is dispersed around the country.

It would be different, of course, if ministers (and indeed Parliament - and the higher courts?) were to relocate outside London, though I do not recommend it and it certainly isn’t going to happen. Relationships that are mainly conducted in writing or over Zoom/Teams will therefore become even less trusting, leaving ministers more likely to rely on Special Advisers and other informal sources of advice, none of who will be relocating to Liverpool or Darlington.

Stephen Locke added these comments after initial publication of this blog. I have added them as I agree with them and they fit well here:-

“It will also damage relations within the SCS because they will presumably be spread around various locations. So informal interactions that currently happen across Whitehall will be less likely and less productive. A second drawback is that the scheme risks increasing the divides between departments, because they will probably be in different out-stations. This just at a time when we should be seeking to reduce boundaries and improve seamless decision making.

Meanwhile I query just how realistic it is to expect moves of this kind to reduce London bias in the system. Unless the offices are themselves regionally based, eg with defined responsibilities for the South West or North East, they will be dealing with nationwide issues and probably looking to London for an integrated picture. I don’t, for example, see why an SCS team based in Liverpool should be any more expert in the problems of East Anglia than a team based in London.”

It is likely, too, that the civil service will lose some of their best and most experienced staff if they are put under pressure to move out of the South East. Many will be reluctant to disturb the careers and education of their partners and children. (Couples that live apart too often grow apart.) Others will worry that they will not be able to afford London prices if/when they are asked to return and/or that their careers will progress more slowly than those who remain physically close to ministers and Permanent Secretaries. Others will be reluctant to disrupt the social lives that they have developed with colleagues, neighbours and other friends.

I am not arguing that life in London’s commuter belt is any better than life elsewhere. Indeed, it is arguably less pleasant in many ways that are all too obvious to those of us who have moved south. And numerous colleagues have taken regional jobs and loved them. But the forced rehousing of a significant chunk of the SCS is bound to be highly disruptive, at least until regional recruits have gained sufficient experience.

Martin Stanley

1. Further analysis and explanation may be found here and in this book.

2. More detail is here and here.

3. The problems and some solutions are described here.