Back to the UK’s bloated civil service. As if the government didn’t have enough on its plate trying to slash Whitehall red tape, the number of sick days taken by civil servants won’t help Sir Keir Starmer’s army pick up the pace on progress. Civil servant absences are on track to reach a record high – and the Foreign Office is no exception to the trend. Mr S can reveal the number of sick days taken by FCDO mandarins shot up by more than 50 per cent in the financial year ending March 2024 compared to the previous year – while the number of days lost to mental health issues soared by more than three-quarters.
A Freedom of Information response has shown that in the period from April 2023-March 2024, almost 30,000 days were lost to sick leave within the Foreign Office department, a rise of 51.4 per cent on the previous year. 8,400 days were lost to mental health issues within the department – a surge of 77.3 per cent on the year before – while those civil servants requiring sickness leave on mental health grounds rose to 254 in 2023-24, a 65 per cent increase on the previous financial year. These rather staggering absence rises are despite the total number of Foreign Office staff increasing between the years by just 500 people. Good heavens…
Remarking on the revelation, the TaxPayers’ Alliance’s investigations manager Joanna Marchong noted:
While families up and down the country are working hard and paying their bills, civil servants are increasingly absence for any reason in the book. Ministers must get a grip and ensure that the Foreign Office is run with the same discipline expected in private sector workplaces. It’s unacceptable that civil servants don’t show up.
The findings come after central department data published earlier this month found that mandarin absences in 2025 could work out at more than eight days a year per employee. Last year, the average number of days off per worker was 4.4 – but this year, departmental reports are suggesting that the number of average days lost per worker could soar past the all-time high of 8.3 days per person, reached in the post-pandemic period of 2023. Staff sickness rates increased by 11.8 per cent in the year to March 2025 at the Home Office, while the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government saw absences shoot up by 12 per cent. Perhaps Starmer had a point when he insisted ‘too many people in Whitehall are comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline’, eh?
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