The growth we don't need

Jonathan Eida has a useful TPA piece on what seems like the inexorable growth of the Civil Service and the humongous liabilities which come with it. Depressing but worth reading as there is no obvious prospect of Andrew Burnham doing anything about it.


The true cost of the civil service is worse than you think

The waistband on the trousers of the civil service continues to stretch as the Whitehall blob expands year after year. The prime minister may come and go, but the appetite for a larger, more active state appears remarkably constant. Andy Burnham is no exception, with his “Number 10 North” proposal being just the latest pretext for another layer of bureaucracy.

Since the government began publishing comparable civil service workforce data in 2016, headcount has risen by a shocking 33.3 per cent.

Between March 2016 and March 2026, civil service employment increased by 139,485, from 418,340 to 557,825. In the last year alone, the number of civil servants rose by 8,165, or 1.5 per cent, from 549,660 in March 2025 to 557,825 in March 2026. That rate of growth was two and a half times the 0.6 per cent increase in total public sector headcount over the same period.