Senior civil servants will get bonuses for exceptional performance for the first time under a new pay system, as the government moves to reward what Darren Jones called the “doers, not the talkers”. Most civil servants will receive a 3.5% pay rise, but senior staff will get a base increase of 2.5% and 1% of their award will be held back for bonuses for the highest performers.
The change means the lowest band of senior civil servant pay will rise by about £5,000, but the full 3.5% increase recommended for the wider civil service will not be passed on to senior ranks. Instead, the government will keep back some of the money to pay a smaller number of officials extra for stronger delivery, a shift Jones said would help push the system toward results rather than caution.
The reform lands after almost two decades in which pay progression across the civil service has been criticised as weak, and it builds on a policy direction first floated by the Conservatives as a trial before the last election. Labour has since taken up the idea and made performance-related pay for senior civil servants part of its wider drive to reform, or “rewire,” the civil service.
Jones set out that ambition in January, saying he wanted to “rewire” the civil service, bring in bonuses for top performers across senior ranks and “move fast, fix things” while finding savings of £2bn a year by 2030. He also said more civil servants would be “shown the door” if they did not meet standards, signalling that the new pay approach is tied to a tougher view of accountability.
On Thursday, the government said it wanted to give “higher but fewer bonuses to those exceptional senior civil servants who go above and beyond”, making clear that the new system is designed to concentrate rewards rather than spread them evenly. That is a notable break from the full uplift recommended for senior staff, and it shows ministers are willing to hold back part of the settlement to create room for performance pay.
Lauren Crowley said the overhaul was long overdue. “Pay systems across the civil service have been blighted by a lack of meaningful pay progression for almost two decades,” she said, adding that the ability to move up a pay band based on delivery, skills and experience should be part of any well-functioning workplace. She said the lack of that kind of progression had hurt morale, delivery and efforts to attract and retain talent.
Crowley said the changes to senior civil service pay announced on Thursday were “finally beginning to address this” and had been achieved through sustained work and negotiation. But she warned that pay progression for the rest of the civil service — the majority of the membership — had not yet been secured, leaving the broader workforce waiting to see whether the new approach reaches beyond the top tier.
The announcement is one of a stream of government moves this week as Keir Starmer faces pressure to show voters he is delivering. For Jones, who has made reform of the machine of government a central theme since January, the test now is whether a system built to reward a few high performers can improve the wider service without deepening the gap with the rest of the workforce.
