Civil service and ministerial leaders have revealed details of a scheme that will shrink the size of government, but claimed that departments will be asked to protect key technical skills
Digital professionals will not be eligible for an ongoing voluntary exit schemes that will see about 5,000 officials leave the civil service.
The Cabinet Office permanent secretary and civil service chief operating officer Cat Little told MPs recently that 36 voluntary exit schemes are currently taking place.
“Of those 36 schemes, we are forecasting around 5,000 exits from the civil service by the end of March 2026,” Little said during a Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee session.
Explaining how the voluntary exit process is working across government, Little said: “We need to reduce the size of the civil service, and we have got clear direction under government policy to do that in administrative, back-office functions so that we can protect vital frontline citizen services. So, under that direction to meet our budgets over the course of next two years, that work is already under way.”
The Whitehall COO said that departments are bearing in mind the importance of protecting digital skills and “some of the services that we know are absolutely vital to our ability to deliver priorities” when administering voluntary exit schemes.
“That work is happening at departmental level, and then the Cabinet Office oversees all of the voluntary exit schemes, [working] with departments to make sure that we understand how they’re being made and also what sort of skills are being retained as a result of those programmes,” she added.
MPs asked about what is being done to ensure there is not an exodus of top talent.
She said each department “can design their voluntary exit scheme in a way that’s relevant to their business” and used the Cabinet Office as an example.
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“We’ve just concluded a very large voluntary exit scheme,” Little said. “We stipulated the skills and the levels of performance for people who would and wouldn’t be eligible for that scheme. So we very specifically said, if you are a digital expert, if you are delivering work that is a government priority, if you are categorised as a high performer in our performance management framework, then you are not eligible for that voluntary exit scheme. Every department will have their own version of how they run the schemes to protect skills and to protect priorities, depending on the business that they operate.”
Adding to her comments, Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the prime minister, said: “It’s right to question the size and the cost of the civil service, but the more important question for me is productivity of the state. So it’s fine reducing headcount and reducing cost, because [we] have to live within our means. There’s difficult economic circumstances we’re operating under, but we have got to shift productivity, which is really about skills and training and digital transformation, thinking about what we do in London, what we do in other parts of the country. And so there’s a kind of bigger picture here, which, I think, is more of the prize that the public will expect us to try to secure.”
Little was also asked about compulsory exits. She said that, according to Civil Service Compensation Scheme guidance, departments must run a voluntary exit process before considering compulsory exits. Civil service leadership will look at whether this is the case at the end of the 2025-26 financial year, she said.
During the session, she also confirmed that the civil service strategic review is likely be published in the next three-to-six-months. The review it will contain details of where the 16% administrative savings departments have been asked to find will come from, including full-time equivalent job reductions, she said.
