Wednesday, September 27, 2017
The wheels are coming off the UK's Brexit department
As if the performance of UK Government Ministers in negotiating with their EU counterparts was not woeful enough, the Independent reports that they have problems at home too.
The paper says that Britain’s Department for Exiting the European Union has only existed for 14 months but already more than 20 per cent of its staff have left:
According to the Government’s response to a freedom of information request submitted by Bloomberg, as of 18 August, 124 employees had left the department since it was set up, leaving 482.
The churn on Cabinet office jobs reportedly soared from 20 per cent in 2010 to 35 per cent in 2016, but the average staff turnover across the civil service more broadly was just 9.1 per cent last year.
The high turnover within the Brexit department could suggest that civil servants don’t enjoy working in the office which is tasked with one of the Government's most challenging jobs in decades.
The Government says that fewer than five of the people who had left had quit the civil service altogether, suggesting that some officials may just be passing through the department to gain valuable experience. It added that a large majority of the changes were the “result of normal civil service rotation or the end of defined loan periods”.
Nevertheless, I would argue that the higher turnover rate in this department does suggest a certain amount of disillusionment with the Government's position and a desire not to be associated with failure.
The paper says that Britain’s Department for Exiting the European Union has only existed for 14 months but already more than 20 per cent of its staff have left:
According to the Government’s response to a freedom of information request submitted by Bloomberg, as of 18 August, 124 employees had left the department since it was set up, leaving 482.
The churn on Cabinet office jobs reportedly soared from 20 per cent in 2010 to 35 per cent in 2016, but the average staff turnover across the civil service more broadly was just 9.1 per cent last year.
The high turnover within the Brexit department could suggest that civil servants don’t enjoy working in the office which is tasked with one of the Government's most challenging jobs in decades.
The Government says that fewer than five of the people who had left had quit the civil service altogether, suggesting that some officials may just be passing through the department to gain valuable experience. It added that a large majority of the changes were the “result of normal civil service rotation or the end of defined loan periods”.
Nevertheless, I would argue that the higher turnover rate in this department does suggest a certain amount of disillusionment with the Government's position and a desire not to be associated with failure.
