Thread by @PickardJE

in March 2020 Rishi Sunak announced plans to move 22,000 civil servants out of central London by 2030

how’s that going?

er

civil service headcount in London grew 11% from 91,660 to 101,930 in the year to March 2021, more than double the rate elsewhere

ft.com/content/b6d194…

and what about over the period of 2010 to 2021 - ie since the Tories came to power?

- net *increase* of 15,401 civil servants in London

- net *decrease* of 58,005 across the other regions

here are the stats for last year….the trend could not be clearer

some officials moving this year to Wolverhampton, Glasgow, Darlington:

this won’t reverse job losses 2010-2021

-5,035 North-east
- 4,601 Yorkshire
- 4,635 West Midlands
- 4,785 East Midlands
- 8,188 East England
-11,506 South-east
-9,243 South-west
-3,012 Scotland
-685 NI

this is going to be a long thread - sorry - because I have become obsessed with this data

reaction from Labour’s @SteveReedMP

“this is the latest in a series of con tricks from a Conservative government which is more interested in churning out press releases than actually fixing economic disparities between different parts of the country”

so why did gov hire 10,000 officials in London over last year, while preaching the opposite?

- partly because of the surge in policymaking roles based in the capital

- first dealing with Brexit
- then tackling Covid

this @FT chart shows the pattern over the last 11 years

58,000 civil service jobs CUT outside London since 2010:

but new jobs now pledged

- “Treasury North” campus in Darlington with over 750 roles

- housing ministry Wolverhampton outpost with 800 officials…by 2030

- new branch of Cabinet Office in Glasgow with 500 staff by 2024

there's another curious twist to this tale:

I went back and looked at Gordon Brown's attempt to shift civil servants out of London in 2003 via the Michael Lyons review.

what happened over the following seven years?

the Lyons report - just like Sunak last year - called for 20,000 civil servants to be deployed out of London

it never really happened

the civil service workforce in London was almost exactly the same size seven years later - having dipped from 86,790 to 86,529

thoughts from Prof Tony Travers:

“these extraordinary figures show how Britain is such a centralised country that ministers can never escape the need for officials close by to provide them with administrative services, hour by hour, day by day….”

one final statistic:

even if Sunak succeeds in moving 22,000 officials out of London by 2030….which is possible…

….that will only take the London civil service back to its 2011 level

….and the regions will still be 34,000 short of their workforce back then