CS keeps expanding

[Roger Mexico]

2 hours ago, Moghrey Mie said:

All this for 85,000 people. It's incredible.

The city of Chester has a smaller population. I wonder how many departments and civil servants they have.

They have two Members of Parliament.

The City of Chester hasn't had two MPs since 1885.  Just how old are you?  Technically it has slightly less than one as the constituency (pop 92,995) includes some areas outside the traditional boundaries of the City (pop 79,645).

The City is now part of the unitary authority of Cheshire West and Chester (pop 343,071), so it doesn't have any departments or civil servants or equivalent.  But I doubt even that can match our numbers, even  ignoring things like the NHS.

[Steve_Christian]

2 hours ago, Moghrey Mie said:

All this for 85,000 people. It's incredible.

The city of Chester has a smaller population. I wonder how many departments and civil servants they have.

They have two Members of Parliament.

I don’t disagree that the CS is too big but you can’t compare a region, who has access to centralised U.K. government services and departments (like Chester) to the IOM who have to have departments for everything within the island and therefore the government. You’re comparing apples with oranges. 

[Roger Mexico]

2 hours ago, Nom de plume said:

I spoke with a well placed person over the weekend in regards my initial question over the number of people here employed directly by the Government.

16,000.

Seems unlikely.  Astonishingly the latest Annual Report of the Public Services Commission doesn't seem to give a figure for the number of employees they have, but a Tynwald question 16 months ago gave a figure of 7,935.  That doesn't include those employed outside the Departments, most notably IOM Post and MUA, but there's not enough of those to double that figure.

[Andy Onchan]

4 hours ago, Manx Resident said:

Some time ago the idea of establishing “IOM Government” as a single legally recognized entity was mooted leading to the scrapping of independent autonomous departments. Establishing a single Chief Executive Officer and a number of Chief Operating Officers to run ‘departments’ under the banner of IOM Government could be the beginning of such a move.

Such a move would allow DOI for example to be broken up into Highways, Transport, Ports etc each operating under IOM Government. The issue will be how many Officers are eventually upgraded or appointed to be Chief Operating Officers to run the various fiefdoms.

Also, perhaps there will be no need for Ministers and particularly Members. A ‘board’ of senior politicians might direct IOM Government as a whole….. will perhaps address the problems with the skills pool in the current administration.

Food for thought……..

You mean like it used to be before the ministerial system was foisted on us?! Too many chiefs and not enough indians.

[Andy Onchan]

45 minutes ago, Roger Mexico said:

Seems unlikely.  Astonishingly the latest Annual Report of the Public Services Commission doesn't seem to give a figure for the number of employees they have, but a Tynwald question 16 months ago gave a figure of 7,935.  That doesn't include those employed outside the Departments, most notably IOM Post and MUA, but there's not enough of those to double that figure.

What about supposedly fixed-term contacts? You can probably add at least 2K to that list.

[Roger Mexico]

Just now, Andy Onchan said:

What about supposedly fixed-term contacts? You can probably add at least 2K to that list.

They do seem to be included if you look at the details.  I make it 99 mostly in Cabinet Office and DfE.  That's surprisingly few, probably because so many get converted into full-time positions or the holders move on internally.

[NoTailT]

Just now, Roger Mexico said:

They do seem to be included if you look at the details.  I make it 99 mostly in Cabinet Office and DfE.  That's surprisingly few, probably because so many get converted into full-time positions or the holders move on internally.

I think a majority of Digital's staff are on fixed term contracts? Something to do with how the agencies funding cycles work and can only issue 12 month contracts at a time?

[Boris Johnson]

52 minutes ago, Roger Mexico said:

Seems unlikely.  Astonishingly the latest Annual Report of the Public Services Commission doesn't seem to give a figure for the number of employees they have, but a Tynwald question 16 months ago gave a figure of 7,935.  That doesn't include those employed outside the Departments, most notably IOM Post and MUA, but there's not enough of those to double that figure.

If you count  everyone who's paycheck comes  from gov directly like teachers,  firemen, Police etc  I tthink you will find  its much more than 16K persons

God  help us private enterprise individuals  who have  to pay for this madness.

[Nellie]

4 hours ago, Manx Resident said:

Some time ago the idea of establishing “IOM Government” as a single legally recognized entity was mooted leading to the scrapping of independent autonomous departments. Establishing a single Chief Executive Officer and a number of Chief Operating Officers to run ‘departments’ under the banner of IOM Government could be the beginning of such a move.

Such a move would allow DOI for example to be broken up into Highways, Transport, Ports etc each operating under IOM Government. The issue will be how many Officers are eventually upgraded or appointed to be Chief Operating Officers to run the various fiefdoms.

Also, perhaps there will be no need for Ministers and particularly Members. A ‘board’ of senior politicians might direct IOM Government as a whole….. will perhaps address the problems with the skills pool in the current administration.

Food for thought……..

This is more or less exactly what they did in Jersey a few years ago. 

They appointed a guy called Charlie Parker who had been CEO at Westminster City Council - a big job in UK local government to head it up and make it happen.

He became CEO Jersey Government and there was a huge clear out of people who would have been Dept. CEO's, COO's, Directors of this and that, in IOM language. Chris Robershaw's much loathed 'silos' disappeared, organistional structures were delayered and flattened and standardising 'spans of control'. i.e. getting away from layers of 'managers' having only one or two reportees.

Parker was a pretty ruthless guy and just bulldozed it all through, but obviously he had the political backing necessary.

 

 

[Ringy Rose]

5 minutes ago, Andy Onchan said:

What about supposedly fixed-term contacts? You can probably add at least 2K to that list.

The question to Tynwald was how many employees there were. There's no slight of hand.

1 hour ago, Steve_Christian said:

You’re comparing apples with oranges. 

Indeed.

It's also worth noting just how many people are no longer on local authority books in the UK. Obvious groups like bus drivers aren't, but then a lot of teachers aren't, IT is often outsourced, in some areas even payroll is outsourced.

They're still there and they're still getting paid for, but they're not "civil servants".

But hey, the usual sad sacks will be along soon to tell us yet again how everyone in the public service is lazy and overpaid.

 

[Ringy Rose]

4 minutes ago, Boris Johnson said:

If you count  everyone who's paycheck comes  from gov directly like teachers,  firemen, Police etc  I tthink you will find  its much more than 16K persons

If you'd actually bothered to read the link you'd see they're all included in the 7,900. So are the bus drivers.

The only ones who aren't are IOM Post and the MUA.

[Roger Mexico]

14 minutes ago, Boris Johnson said:

If you count  everyone who's paycheck comes  from gov directly like teachers,  firemen, Police etc  I tthink you will find  its much more than 16K persons

God  help us private enterprise individuals  who have  to pay for this madness.

Those figures include teachers (990), firefighters (53) and police (229).  

Edited to add: It also includes a lot of part-time workers.  For example there are 124 stated as 'Youth Service', but the annual salary only works out at about £3,500 each, which suggests most will only be working a few hours a week.

Edited December 19, 2022 by Roger Mexico

[Apple]

On 12/16/2022 at 12:26 PM, CallMeCurious said:

Heard CM announce plan to replace Chief Secretary role with Chief Executive Officer (IOM) and another position and 'demoting' existing CEO's to CO's in the New Year (subject to Tynwald) and a new committe run by himself to oversee 'performance'.

..and who is going to oversee their performance ? And how could that be done.?  Intriguing.

[Roger Mexico]

12 minutes ago, Ringy Rose said:

The only ones who aren't are IOM Post and the MUA.

There will be other Boards and so on.  The FSA for example has 86 staff (most paid over £50k).  MNH has about 100 staff from memory.  But many will have fewer employees, maybe only a handful.  You might also add the Steam Packet and some directly-owned companies (meat plant, flour mill).   But all these will only add hundreds, not thousands.

It's interesting to compare how, even a few years ago, the PSC reports used to contain much more information.  The bigger the Cabinet Office gets the less it tells you. 

[Ringy Rose]

3 minutes ago, Roger Mexico said:

There will be other Boards and so on.  The FSA for example has 86 staff (most paid over £50k).  MNH has about 100 staff from memory.  But many will have fewer employees, maybe only a handful.  You might also add the Steam Packet and some directly-owned companies (meat plant, flour mill).   But all these will only add hundreds, not thousands.

The Tynwald question was specific to the departments, and it's unclear if the statutory boards are included- the GSC and FSA are nominally attached to Treasury for other things.

The boards and regulators are a bit harder to tie to "the taxpayer"- licence fees for both the FSA and the GSC can be fifty grand a year. And even more so for the likes of the Steam Packet.

All in, I'd say 10,000 was about right for all public service employees, but most of those are teachers, nurses, medics, police and fire.

Cabinet Office has swallowed up HR, payroll, and IT for the whole government, which bloats their numbers.