UK finance minister Hunt freezes civil service expansion

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British finance minister Jeremy Hunt said on Monday he would freeze the expansion of the country's civil service and intended to return it to its pre-pandemic size, a plan which he said would save up to 1 billion pounds ($1.21 billion) next year.

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04 Oct 2023

Hunt said that Britain employed 66,000 more civil servants now than before COVID-19 struck in 2020, and the plan to shrink the number of officials was aimed at cutting costs in the long-term.

«I'm freezing the expansion of the civil service and putting in place a plan to reduce its numbers to pre-pandemic levels. This will save 1 billion pounds next year,» he told the governing Conservative Party's annual conference in Manchester.

Headcount would be immediately capped at the current level, the government said in a follow-up statement, although it added that this did not equate to a recruitment freeze. There are currently around 488,000 civil servants.

Government departments would also be asked to produce plans to reduce headcount to pre-pandemic levels in the coming years, the finance ministry said, and