Civil service reform? Burnham is rearranging deck chairs
The civil service needs serious reform. Rearranging the deck chairs (and sending some to Manchester) simply won’t cut it, writes Jonathan Eida
Politicians are finally discovering what taxpayers have known for years: the civil service is too big, too expensive and too slow.
Ahead of the next general election, the Tories, Reform and even Labour are now talking about rectifying this problem. Reform has Danny Kruger working on civil service reform. The Tories have called for returning the civil service to the headcount level of 2016. And even the Labour government has pushed for more civil service productivity in order to cut costs in its spending review.
With total public service productivity only increasing by 0.9 per cent in 2025, the consensus seems to be that the public sector, including the civil service, is not working. But things only seem to be getting worse. The size of the state continues to grow year on year with few signs of relenting or the productivity to match.
How big is the civil service in 2026?
This expansion is clearly evident in the civil service. According to new research by the Taxpayers’ Alliance, between 2016 and 2026, civil service headcount increased by almost 140,000, from 418,340 to 557,825, or 33.3 per cent. Since 2025 alone, the number of civil servants has increased by 8,165.
The total cost of civil service salaries in 2026 is estimated to be over £22.5bn, an increase of 95 per cent since 2016. Clearly, cash is being piled in without the requisite productivity output.
And it is not just the headcount that is climbing, but staff themselves are ascending the organisational ladder at a disproportionate rate. The growth of the civil service between 2025 and 2026 has been concentrated in higher grades. Employees in the top three grades of the civil service increased by 7,600, or three per cent. Meanwhile, the most junior grade fell.
This is seemingly a partial consequence of grade inflation where staff are offered promotions as a make-weight for overall pay restraint. Crucially, this is not always tied to performance, but rather senior roles are being dolled out as a reward for staying in the job. The result is overpromoted personnel occupying top jobs, causing a slowdown of the state’s productive capacity.
Burnham’s devolution is unlikely to help
The issue is only likely to get worse under Burnham. The Prime Minister seems obsessed with shifting around the deck chairs, moving some chairs to Manchester while he is at it. But, obviously, these do not resolve the core issues.
In fact, the North West of England, where Manchester is situated, has the second-highest civil service headcount in 2026. In the decade to 2016, the North West has recorded the largest increase in its share of the civil service workforce, rising from 12.4 per cent to 13.5 per cent. If shifting functions of Whitehall across the country were really the solution, we would have already seen productivity increases as the civil service spreads out across the country.
Fundamentally, major changes are required to resolve the civil service’s fledgling productivity. Performance and underperformance must be treated accordingly. The failure to perform should not be rewarded as it currently seems to be.
More importantly, there must be a reduction in the role of the state. The state is bloated enough as is, and no amount of Manchesterism gimmicks will resolve that. However, if this is the direction Burnham was to go, to curb further growth, the government should adopt a ‘one-up, two-down’ rule, with every new civil service role created in the North of England being matched by the abolition of two senior posts in London. This would ensure that No 10 North does not simply become a vehicle for creating more ‘non-jobs’, while also cutting back the layers of middle management in Whitehall.
The answer is not more bureaucracy sprawled across the country, but a smaller state that genuinely works.
Jonathan Eida is public affairs manager at the Taxpayers’ Alliance