Amidst the controversy over sacking armed services personnel I have today received the figures for the MOD headcount.
The total is down 1470 between May 2010 and January 2011 (full time equivalents). Over this same time period 3250 (fte) left the MOD, implying they must have hired 1780 new people (fte) over the same time period. The total in employment last month was 84,180. (fte)
There might be more scope for natural wastage to do the job they want to do.
March 3, 2011
thx john – these numbers refer only to MoD / whitehall – not services personnel right? ‘people flying desks’ in the jargon?
Reply: Yes
March 3, 2011
JR: “There might be more scope for natural wastage to do the job they want to do.”
How many in the MOD are in command of a Desk? We could surely get rid of one or two of those?
March 3, 2011
Now here is an opportunity to make cuts – the scale and inefficiency of the MOD is legendary – save the planes and the pilots and cut 50,000 jobs from London!
March 3, 2011
John, don’t forget the words of Sir Humphrey:
” The Civil Service does not make profit or losses. Ergo, we measure success by the size of our staff and our budget. By definition a big department is more successful than a small one.”
March 3, 2011
I have just read a report on the BBC website quoting the National Audit Office saying: ‘”Without information on costs and benefits, departments do not have a sound basis for making fully informed choices about what activities to stop, to change, and to continue, as they were asked to do in the spending review.”
The head of the National Audit Office, Amyas Morse, said: “We do not feel that the culture of the civil service has yet taken information-led management and financial management in particular, to its heart,” he said.’
Says it all really and Sir Humphrey’s dictum clearly still rules.
March 3, 2011
Remind me, how many personnel do we have in the Services these days?
Perhaps we need an MoD staff to Services personnel ratio, along the lines of the pupil to teacher ratio for schools. Possibly the same figure, say 1 to 30 !