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Home I am a civil servant Events Civil Service Live News Day 1 – Introducing Civil Service West Midlands

Civil Service Live

Introducing Civil Service West Midlands

This content is provided by Whitehall and Westminster World

Civil Service West Midlands, to be launched this Thursday in Birmingham, promises to be a ground-breaking pilot scheme aimed at making the civil service “the employer of choice in the West Midlands“.

Outgoing programme manager Jo O'Hara told a Civil Service Live session that the scheme enjoyed backing at the highest levels of the civil service, including cabinet secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell and Department of Work and Pensions permanent secretary Sir Leigh Lewis.

“ “We want creativity, we want new ideas and we want to look at it from a West Midlands perspective,“ Jo O'Hara was told.

She said the scheme would initially be focussed on improving the diversity in the West Midlands civil service, promoting networks between civil servants of different grades and geographical locations but would not deal with pay arrangements.

“It's not about pay, that's the one area that is off limits - there are plenty of people talking about pay,“ Jo O'Hara said.

“It's how can we use this project to make that deal better for staff, to express that deal better , to communicate it and to get people a bit more excite about it,“ she added.

On diversity, Jo O'Hara noted that headline figures for gender and ethnic diversity in the West Midlands were good overall but added that “all of our diversity seems to be concentrated in the lower grades“.

“There's something happening to stop people getting on, getting up and us really taking advantage of that rich mix of talent we've particularly got in the West Midlands.“

She pointed to the importance of building up networks of communication between civil servants in “different locations, with different skills“.

Paying tribute to the “fantastic“ support received from senior Whitehall figures, trade unions and the Government Office for the West Midlands, Jo O'Hara said her team had “all the cogs of government“ working to promote the initiative.

“Gus's plan is roll this out to all of the regions,“ she added.

“If the model has legs, works, gets the support from staff then it will be the model for regional civil service.“

The scheme received the backing of minister for the West Midlands Liam Byrne, who said the delivery of the government's strong targets for the area required the commitment of the regional civil service.

“We're quite clear about our targets but we know too that we won't deliver this agenda unless we meet the long term challenges in the West Midlands around skills, around science, around transport, around trade and around the region's reputation,“ Byrne said.

“That will require government and public services working together in a completely new way.“