The Employment Implications of Civil Service Reform in the United Kingdom: National and Regional Evidence from the North East of England

Abstract

The authors examine the impact of civil service reform on work and employment in the civil service. The research is based on an analysis, at the national scale, of secondary-source employment data, and a case study of civil service employment in the North East of England. Important gender dimensions to employment change are demonstrated. Nationally, job losses have been concentrated in full-time work in lower administrative grades—where women predominate. In contrast, women have benefited from the growth of part-time work, again in more junior grades, and there has been less substantial employment growth in middle-ranking posts. Job loss has also been concentrated in certain geographic areas, predominantly London and a few major administrative centres in peripheral regions. A study of selected civil service departments in one of these locations, the North East of England, demonstrates that continual organisational change, intensification, and associated ‘incentivisation’ of work, as well as a growth of contracting out to the private sector, has created a climate of uncertainty and instability in the civil service. The authors also demonstrate that different salaries and conditions of service are evolving in quasi-independent agencies. They speculate about the geographical implications of such a breakup of the civil service.