By Arthur Reynolds

Despite repeated promises to streamline government, the UK Civil Service has continued to expand — and devolution proposals will only accelerate that growth.

Britain's private sector has now cut jobs for 22 consecutive months, yet the country's bureaucratic workforce has kept growing. According to Civil Service statistics published this summer, headcount rose by more than 8,000 over the last financial year. That continued expansion comes on top of sustained growth since 2016, when the workforce stood near 384,000; Brexit preparation and pandemic response swelled it past 500,000, and it has not returned to pre-referendum levels.

At the 2025 Spring Statement, Rachel Reeves pledged that voluntary-exit schemes would "reduce the size of the Civil Service." Since then, however, more than 40,000 new recruits have joined, far outweighing the 2,690 employees who departed through voluntary redundancy.

Each voluntary exit costs taxpayers approximately £56,000, and officials who accept them are free to return to government roles after six months without forfeiting any compensation. In effect, the public is funding extended absences for departing bureaucrats while simultaneously paying salaries for their replacements.

The Starmer government's target of cutting departmental administrative budgets by 16 per cent by 2029-30 looks increasingly unrealistic. The Institute for Government estimates that achieving this goal could require approximately 40,000 job cuts. Under current redundancy arrangements, the government expects to deliver fewer than 9,000. This shortfall will test the Chancellor's wider fiscal arithmetic, which already relies on substantial efficiency savings to reconcile pledges of restrained borrowing with rising spending pressures across the NHS, defence, and welfare.

Devolution and the Growth of Whitehall

The argument that devolution will shrink the Civil Service may be theoretically appealing, but it has no grounding in historical experience. Political power has flowed toward Edinburgh, Cardiff, and the English regions for more than a generation, yet the bureaucracy has grown steadily larger.

In a speech early last month, Darren Jones echoed this concern, warning that "devolution must mean devolution, not duplication." Since the coalition government launched its sweeping English devolution agenda in 2014 — granting new powers to Manchester and a succession of city regions — Civil Service headcount has risen by almost 120,000.

Rather than reducing its own footprint, Whitehall has responded to devolution by transforming itself into a regulatory state. It establishes objectives, allocates grants, and intervenes when local leaders underperform. Critically, central government retains control of funding and absorbs political risk — an arrangement that Andy Burnham was content to leverage during his tenure as Mayor of Greater Manchester.

A Burgeoning Bureaucracy

The mayoral settlements Burnham now inherits will create a substantial new layer of administration, overseen by programme boards staffed by officials from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), the Treasury, and any department contributing funding. Mayoral autonomy will operate within "outcomes frameworks" agreed with the centre and enforced through additional accounting officers, reporting mandates, and spending controls.

There is a distinct possibility that the devolution agenda will generate more politicians and more officials, not fewer. The National Audit Office has already cautioned that existing plans may demand greater capacity across both Whitehall and regional government.

Compounding the challenge, existing civil servants are becoming harder to dislodge. Staff turnover has fallen to its lowest level outside the pandemic in over a decade.

The Prime Minister has promised a "new economic model," but the current trajectory risks turning Britain into a public sector with an economy attached.