The Employment Implications of Civil Service Reform in the United Kingdom: National and Regional Evidence from the North East of England

J N Marshall, R Richardson and J Hopkins

Environment and Planning A, 1999, vol. 31, issue 5, 803-817

Abstract: The authors examine the impact of civil service reform on work and employment in the civil service. The research is based on an analysis, at the national scale, of secondary-source employment data, and a case study of civil service employment in the North East of England. Important gender dimensions to employment change are demonstrated. Nationally, job losses have been concentrated in full-time work in lower administrative grades—where women predominate. In contrast, women have benefited from the growth of part-time work, again in more junior grades, and there has been less substantial employment growth in middle-ranking posts. Job loss has also been concentrated in certain geographic areas, predominantly London and a few major administrative centres in peripheral regions. A study of selected civil service departments in one of these locations, the North East of England, demonstrates that continual organisational change, intensification, and associated ‘incentivisation’ of work, as well as a growth of contracting out to the private sector, has created a climate of uncertainty and instability in the civil service. The authors also demonstrate that different salaries and conditions of service are evolving in quasi-independent agencies. They speculate about the geographical implications of such a breakup of the civil service.

Date: 1999
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envira:v:31:y:1999:i:5:p:803-817

DOI: 10.1068/a310803

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