Appointments to senior civil service (SCS) posts reached a peak in 2007, Civil Service World research has found, before entering a gentle decline – then collapsing by more than 50 per cent in 2010.

Meanwhile, despite the coalition imposing a ban on recruiting new civil servants from the private, voluntary and wider public sectors after last year’s general election, the proportion of such external recruits fell only slightly in 2010, dropping from 24 per cent in 2008 and 30 per cent in 2009 to 21 per cent in 2010.

The figures were gathered by CSW during the researching of a Special Report published today, and are based both on Freedom of Information requests submitted by CSW to 11 government departments, and the results of a previous round of FoI requests carried out in 2008.

The number of SCS appointments peaked at 302 in our 11-strong sample of Whitehall departments in 2007, then fell to 287 and 280 in subsequent years. In 2010, however, the number fell to just 135: a drop of 52 per cent.

Along with external candidates, applicants from within the recruiting department also saw their share of appointments decline in 2010, falling from 40 to 30 per cent.

The big winners in the battle for available SCS jobs were applicants from other parts of the civil service, who saw their share of filled posts rise from 30 per cent in 2009 to 50 per cent in 2010.

This growth may reflect last year’s efforts to redeploy ‘surplus’ civil servants to less cash-strapped parts of the civil service, and the launch of regional schemes designed to support movement between different government agencies.

Recruitment into the most senior SCS positions also saw a big decline between 2006-’07 and 2008-’10, falling by more than two thirds. External recruits saw their share of these top appointments collapse from 53 per cent in 2006-’07 to 25 per cent in 2009-’10 – but here there were different winners, with more posts going to internal candidates (50 per cent in 2009-’10) rather than people from other parts of the civil service (25 per cent).

For full results and analysis, see our Special Report.

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Written by CSW