Background
Many government departments and organisations are undertaking employee exit and redundancy schemes to reduce their staff numbers and costs. This is in response to wider imperatives to reduce government spending. The 2025 Spending Review set target reductions for all departments’ administration budgets of at least 11% in real terms by 2028-29 and 16% by 2029-30.
Staff reductions are being carried out using established processes for voluntary exits, voluntary redundancies and compulsory redundancies. In addition, the government has announced a new “mutually-agreed exits” process for civil service staff, which the Parliamentary Secretary at the Cabinet Office has said will “give managers more tools to address substandard performance”.
Individual departments are responsible for conducting exit and redundancy schemes for their staff, in accordance with rules set by the Cabinet Office and HM Treasury. Our previous work on this area, Managing early departures in central government (2012), identified issues which are still relevant to the design and implementation of current schemes, such as the need for effective workforce planning to ensure skilled staff are retained.
Scope
This work will set out a broad framework for assessing how government staff exits and redundancies are conducted, including:
- a background explainer on government exit and redundancy schemes, including the new mutually-agreed exits process
- a summary of challenges and risks involved in managing exits and redundancies, based on insights from our past work
- an assessment framework setting out our expectations on managing exits and redundancies effectively (including audit questions, evidence to look for and criteria for assessing evidence)
- key resources, including our past work, government guidance and professional body good practice
NAO team
Director: Kate Caulkin
Audit Manager: Pauline Ngan