Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what the (a) average and (b) longest time between application and a start date for recruiting a civil servant was in the last three years; and whether he is taking steps to reduce those times.

Civil Service recruitment must follow the rules set out in legislation within the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act (CRaGA) 2010 which outlines the requirements to ensure that Civil Servants are recruited on merit, via fair and open competition. The Civil Service must also ensure that detailed pre-employment checks (such as appropriate levels of security clearance) are carried out before employment can begin.

Information on the average time to hire across departments can be found in the recent National Audit Office report published on ‘Civil service workforce: Recruitment, pay and performance management', found here: https://www.nao.org.uk/reports/civil-service-workforce/

As set out in the Civil Service People Plan published on 10 January 2024, we are committed to ensuring we attract, develop and retain talented people from a diverse range of backgrounds, to create a brilliant Civil Service now, and for the future.

We must modernise the ways we recruit, speed up and simplify the process and improve the candidate experience without compromising on quality or fairness. We must also continue to expand the use of secondments and other direct entry routes (including the Fast Stream and apprenticeships), ensuring they are properly embedded in the skills and resourcing strategies of all departments and professions.

The Cabinet Office is introducing a set of consistent and comparable Civil Service recruitment measures and benchmarks which will be implemented across the Whitehall 17 departments. This will give greater transparency of metrics across the recruitment cycle.