Cabinet Office sources this week defended the department’s decision not to advertise 2,300 new civil service posts externally, after critics said redundant local government workers should be allowed to apply.

The jobs were advertised only to existing staff at organisations covered by the Civil Service West Midlands pilot scheme, set up in 2008 to improve the way the local civil service operates across geographical and organisational boundaries.
The scheme is partially designed to save the Government cash, so it was assumed that advertising posts externally would be an expensive cost at a time when Whitehall’s savings drive has led to both jobs cuts across the West Midlands and the creation of some new posts through organisational reconfiguration.
But with other public bodies in the West Midlands announcing massive staff cutbacks – Birmingham City Council, for example, announced 2,000 job cuts just last week – the Cabinet Office now stands accused of protecting ‘jobs for the boys’.
Nick Hurd, Conservative shadow minister for the Cabinet Office, who uncovered the vacancies through parliamentary questions, said newly-redundant public staff should be able to apply for the civil service posts.
‘It is really unfair that central government jobs are being hidden from the public,’ he said.
‘Hard-working people across the West Midlands, struggling on the dole, should have every right to apply for these vacancies.
‘It’s time to open up the Government’s closed shop by publishing these jobs online, and in job centres.’
But a spokeswoman for the Government’s West Midlands office countered: ‘Civil Service West Midlands, and now Civil Service English Regions, work to join up organisations and provide an effective and efficient means of filling in-house vacancies using people with transferable skills, before turning to external recruitment.
‘In-house vacancy filling is regarded as good practice, and is carried out by the most efficient organisations in both the public and private sectors,’ she said.