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Mr Osborne opts for natural wastage

2 September 2010

The Chancellor will cut staff over three years; DfT is trying to do the same thing but in much less time.

The London Evening Standard states that:

He (George Osborne) aims to chop a quarter of the Treasury workforce, reducing staff from about 1,350 to 1,000 in three years by natural wastage rather than redundancies.

Compare this to DfT’s plans which are to restructure by the end of May 2011 and then in the period June to the end of November 2011 to "Work with those not placed in 'new DfT’ to identify options including re-deployment".

When the head of DfT change was asked in a Q&A session why Treasury was dealing with its rundown differently to us he replied that DfT is different. Treasury have a lot of people on secondment. Our natural wastage is currently running at around 3% a year – not enough to hit the numbers in this situation.

This is strange as it is claimed that nobody knows how many staff are to be cut. So maybe 3% natural wastage a year will be enough. Moreover we don’t know yet now how many staff will leave on redundancy or early retirement. Also what about squeezing contractors and consultants etc.?
At the last count there were 278 such non civil servants in DfT(C).

In our opinion DfT senior managers have locked themselves into a mind set where it is good for staff if the cuts are made quickly. They are wrong. Fast cuts will lead to compulsory redundancies. The longer the period to make the changes the better it will be.

 

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