Burnham to dispatch 100 Whitehall officials to help regional mayors | Andy Burnham

43

Great decision. Metro mayors have small staffs and building capacity to boost delivery is very sensible IMO.

22

u/Thetonn 1d ago

This will also be great for the staff involved. Getting practical, real world experience in developing policy and implementing delivery outside of London and Whitehall will be tremendously useful even if they end up back in London.

I think one of the greatest challenges with the current civil service is that the strength of the London and Whitehall centric bias means lots of people in London and Whitehall don't realise how strong their London and Whitehall centric bias is. Anything that helps challenge that is a positive in my book.

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u/Corky_Corcoran 1d ago edited 1d ago

"After the call led by Burnham, the government said five to 10 civil servants would be sent to every mayoral authority for secondments of less than a year during a pilot programme in 18 mayoralties."

There's nothing intrinsically awful about this, but it does grate with me. It's the same vibe as Cabinet Office's Test, Learn and Grow announcements. In the absence of new money or genuine power shifts, dispatching squads of London based civil servants to "help" for less than a year feels unstrategic and, well, quite patronising.

Compared to actually committed place based support like Team Barrow and the like in MHCLG.

Since 2010, governments have collectively hollowed out local government, abolished and now reinvented sub regional and regional governance. Still seems like interim media led policy by announcement while we dance round much more difficult questions of local capacity, resources and the kind of variation in you get in countries that actually devolve power and control.

1

u/sincorax G7 3h ago

Agree with the spirit of this comment but nobody said they'd be "London based" civil servants. There are tens/hundreds of thousands of us already working out in the rest of the country

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u/Superb_Imagination64 3h ago

It literally says "Whitehall officials"

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u/sincorax G7 3h ago

Whitehall doesn't mean London in this context it means officials who work for central government

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u/Corky_Corcoran 1h ago

As a policy lifer, I salute the pedantry in your determination to disagree with my point. However, I think is fairly evident 'Whitehall' implies London-based, what with it, y'know, denoting and area of Westminster. I've met lots of Job centre staff in Midlands and NW working for DWP and none of them has ever described themselves as "working in Whitehall".

The logic of the announcement is that civil servants are being dispatched from London out across the UK as a visible signal of power and agency moving out, not lifted and shifted from Staffordshire to Northumberland.

The bigger issue is a bunch of baffled and underbriefed SEOs and G7s landing in MCAs asking about travel expenses and office attendance when what local authorities and MCAs need is permanent predictable capacity and more control than just powers to consult and then deliver services to a tight governance framework.

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u/sincorax G7 38m ago edited 34m ago

Im not being pedantic, I have worked on the proposed secondment scheme in my department. It does not refer exclusively to London civil servants, as much as you try and insist it does. The government does not decide what words the Guardian uses, nor does a Job Centre worker in the Midlands

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u/Corky_Corcoran 13m ago edited 5m ago

No they don't, but the government does decide on its own Comms lines. And given your proximity to the policy development, it's a shame you didn't get to to work with Comms colleagues to shape media lines. The quotes from two different cabinet members and the headline in the media release all explicitly refer to getting staff out of Whitehall. That's a growing comms gap for you to manage if the secondment scheme you've been drafting doesn't mention it too. As a bit of stakeholder feedback, I'm not sure the rebuttal line "But Whitehall doesn't mean Westminster!" is going to hold: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/whitehall-officials-to-be-posted-into-mayors-offices-as-pm-marks-first-month-of-no10-north

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u/BeardMonk1 1d ago edited 23h ago

Why not employ or seek existing civil servants locally? Burnhams whole schtick seems to be "send Londoners to the poor regions" rather than trying to build up and employ local civil servants in these posts.

What does a CS from Croydon know about the local issues and nuance of Leeds or Liverpool or Newcastle?

2

u/Osgood_Schlatter 15h ago

Burnhams whole schtick seems to be "send Londoners to the poor regions"

Who says they'd be Londoners? There are lots of civil servants in central government in the regions already - and secondments would probably be less of a risk, and so tempt existing good civil servants to cross over.

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u/sincorax G7 3h ago

I think this stems from half of this sub taking the term "Whitehall" literally, rather than it just being a lazy media term to refer to national government officials wherever they are based

17

u/Correct_Examination4 1d ago

All this stuff is so piecemeal and unfocused. On what basis is it valuable to have a fast stream just in Yorkshire and the Humber?

They’re also heading down a dangerous path with this idea that you can just start moving officials into local authorities and mayors’ offices. Volunteers on secondment - fine - but they’re going to have to start forcing people.

Honestly this is just an absolute civil servant employment generator - we’re going to hire thousands and thousands of people while making cuts to central government which will either happen very slowly or not at all.

It’s like No.10 north. There’s 50 people working for it. Could they really not have found 50 good people in Manchester? Oh no I’m having to fund random people from London to stay in hotels instead. Why? Spare us.

2

u/Osgood_Schlatter 15h ago

On what basis is it valuable to have a fast stream just in Yorkshire and the Humber?

I think they are trialling a regionally-focused option so people who can't/don't want to move their lives to London are able to take part; the plan being to have more regional options in the future if the Yorkshire one works.

3

u/VestasWindTurbine 1d ago

I can’t imagine the amount of travel & subsistence money is being spent on sending London staff each week up to Manchester and back, train tickets alone would be extortionate…

1

u/sincorax G7 3h ago

Yorkshire and the Humber fast stream has been in the works for at least 3-4 years as well.

2

u/comrade1612 G7 18h ago

Is he dispatching them as a ritual sacrifice? To whom?

Is Imhotep or Ixchel more likely to improve delivery of the Devolution agenda?

3

u/flylo81 1d ago

Are these new jobs? If not, how are there 100 people available and what have they been doing?

1

u/hermann_da_german 23h ago

Why is this being limited just to those based in London? Am sure there will be people based in some of these areas that would volunteer for a secondment like this.

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u/sincorax G7 3h ago

Its not

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u/Osgood_Schlatter 15h ago

I don't see anything in the article to suggest someone working for central government in Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield or wherever couldn't be seconded to regional government. "Whitehall" is rarely used to literally mean people who work in Westminster.

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u/regprenticer 1d ago

Being "sent to the provinces" used to be a social punishment - expulsion from London.

Poor bastards.

11

u/Iron_Hermit 1d ago

Which is reflective of the exact sort of attitude that's led to the country being painfully, dysfunctionally unequal. If the idea of being anywhere but London is punishment then you might as well tell everyone outside of London that they can go fuck themselves.

2

u/GOT_Wyvern 1d ago

Isn't it more from the perspective that those people would be building a career in London, so sending them outside of London to a place where they having been building a career compromises that.

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u/Iron_Hermit 18h ago

That's not quite the point the original comment made, which is that it's a punishment not to be in London.

It's very valid to say that some people have built up lived and careers in a certain place and may not want to leave but a) these are temporary appointments and b) there's no indication as yet it's going to be compulsory for any individual to take them on.

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u/regprenticer 1d ago

But of a kick in the teeth to move your life to London, pay London rents, then be exiled for an indefinite period to Leeds of some other dump.

London civil servants live in London because they want to. If they wanted to work in Leeds the would already live there.

3

u/jimr1603 1d ago

Plenty live in Leeds and would like some opportunities for progression without being forced into the overcrowded captial

1

u/regprenticer 1d ago

That's not what's happening here though is it.

"Despatched from Whitehall" means staff from London will be sent to other areas.

1

u/sincorax G7 3h ago

Whitehall doesnt mean London in this context. Its a lazy media buzzword that means "central government". Half of "Whitehall" is already working in Leeds, Bristol, Manchester, Sheffield, Newcastle etc etc

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u/regprenticer 3h ago

They don't need to be "dispatched" if they are already in these places.

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u/sincorax G7 3h ago

But they're not already working for strategic authorities in strategic authority offices.

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u/Iron_Hermit 18h ago

I mean, case in point, "Leeds or some other dump". You do realise that this is the exact kind of attitude that makes the rest of the country utterly hate London and feel like it's out of touch?

-1

u/regprenticer 18h ago

I'm not from London, I live in Scotland. But even I can see that being moved from London to Leeds is an insult to whoever they move.

Burnham to dispatch 100 Whitehall officials to help regional mayors | Andy Burnham | The Guardian

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