UK Cabinet Office to shift civil servants to Scotland

The Cabinet Office is to set up a secondary headquarters in Scotland as part of UK prime minister Boris Johnson’s plans to move thousands of civil servants out of London.

Alex Chisholm, permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office, said in an internal letter to staff that at least 500 officials would move to an office in Glasgow by 2024, including senior roles, and ministers will be expected to spend “some time” in Scotland. The department, which supports the prime minister, has a total of 8,500 staff.

Several Whitehall ministries have announced in the past year they will move hundreds of officials from their London bases. There are due to be new offices for the Treasury in Darlington, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government in Wolverhampton, and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport in Manchester.

Ministers hope that the secondary headquarters will bring greater economic prosperity to cities and towns across the UK, as well as serve to inject fresh perspective into civil servants’ policymaking.

But the government also hopes the Cabinet Office’s proposal for a secondary headquarters in Glasgow will help demonstrate the benefits of Scotland remaining part of the UK.

One official said the proposal would “bring the engine room of the UK government to Scotland”.

The Scottish Conservatives’ conference is taking place this weekend, as the party prepares for crunch elections to the Holyrood parliament on May 6.

Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove is expected to visit Glasgow next week as part of the government’s efforts to combat the Scottish National party and its cause of Scottish independence.

Opinion polls suggest the SNP, which has been in power in Edinburgh since 2007, is on course for a landslide victory in the Scottish parliament elections.

But many in the SNP fear that a rift between Scottish first minister and party leader Nicola Sturgeon and her predecessor Alex Salmond could hurt their chances of winning a majority of the seats in the Holyrood parliament.

Johnson will address the Scottish Tory conference, and is expected to say that he will not grant an independence referendum in the event of the SNP securing a majority.

Glasgow already has a strong contingent of civil servants working for the UK and Scottish governments, including international aid officials based in East Kilbride.

Chisholm said in his letter to Cabinet Office staff: “As a department with a key responsibility for the union, it is particularly appropriate that we move to strengthen our presence and commitment in Scotland.”

Amy Leversidge, assistant general secretary of the FDA union that represents senior civil servants, backed the Cabinet Office move to Glasgow but said it was “fundamentally important” that officials could build whole careers in the secondary headquarters.

She added: “While the Cabinet Office have confirmed that there will be senior civil servant roles based in Glasgow, they have only committed that ministers will ‘spend regular time’ there. This isn’t good enough.

“There must also be a ministerial presence in Glasgow, otherwise all the decision-making will continue to be in London and this will act like a gravitational pull for the senior civil servants to be pulled back there too.”

The Cabinet Office said: “decision makers should be close to the people they serve . . . That’s why we’ve committed to relocating civil service roles out of central London, building on the thousands of civil servants we already have working across the United Kingdom.”