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Civil Service workforce up 2,000 to almost 20-year high, figures suggest
The UK Civil Service workforce grew by 2,000 in the first three months of this year to reach its highest level for nearly two decades, figures suggest.
A total of 550,000 people were employed in the Civil Service as of March 2025, according to new data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
This is up from 548,000 in December 2024 and a rise of 1% year-on-year from 544,000 in March 2024.
Headcount fell to 416,000 in June 2016, the month of the EU referendum.
Since that date, the total has risen steadily, driven chiefly by the impact of Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Government announced in April this year that it planned to cut around 2,100 staff from the Cabinet Office, as part of a plan to shrink the Civil Service and reduce the cost of bureaucracy.
Some 1,200 roles will disappear through redundancies, while 900 will be transferred to other departments.
The latest Civil Service headcount of 550,000 is nearly a third higher (32%) than it was in 2016, or an increase of 134,000.
Of the 550,000, almost 443,000 are full-time roles and the remainder are part-time positions.
The last time the quarterly headcount was higher than the current figure was in June 2006, when it stood at 553,000.
The total was on a downwards path during the second half of the 2000s and this trend continued into the 2010s until the EU referendum in 2016, after which the headcount began to climb.
It grew by 40,000 in the years between 2016 and the start of the pandemic, as thousands of people were recruited to manage the complex and lengthy Brexit process.
There was then a further jump once the pandemic was under way, as the Government hired staff to oversee huge projects such as the furlough scheme, testing for Covid-19 and the rollout of the vaccination programme.
Headcount increased by 56,000 between March 2020, when the first lockdown began, and March 2022.
By June 2024, just ahead of the general election on July 4, the total had reached at 546,000, since when the figure has increased by a further 4,000.
Responding to the data, a Government spokesperson said: 'This increase is driven by recruitment to operational roles, including tax collectors and probation officers.
'As part of our Plan for Change, we are creating a more agile and productive state – reducing back-office costs to deliver savings of over £2 billion by 2030 and targeting spending on front line services.
'We have already announced a new cross-government fund for exit schemes to reduce staffing numbers over the next two years, as well as introducing measures to make it quicker and easier to remove poor performers from post.'
Chancellor Rachel Reeves said in March that Civil Service running costs would be reduced by 15% by the end of the decade.
As well as abolishing quangos such as NHS England, ministers have committed to increasing the proportion of civil servants working in digital and data roles, creating a workforce 'fit for the future'.
Two Government departments together account for more than a third of the full Civil Service headcount: the Department for Work & Pensions (17.6% of the total) and the Ministry of Justice (17.5%).
The next largest are HM Revenue & Customs (12.9%), the Ministry of Defence (10.5%) and the Home Office (9.2%).
These five departments together account for just over two-thirds of the total headcount.
