Author: Martin Wheatcroft

Social value an increasingly important element to public procurement

3 November 2020: The Cabinet Office has announced new guidance on procurement for government departments, executive agencies and non-departmental public bodies (quangos), widening the criteria for contract selection to include social value and payment practices.

The social value in procurement model will come into force on 1 January 2021 and is intended to be used by government departments to assess a supplier’s social impact. The hope is that this will mean more opportunities for SMEs and social enterprises to win more of the £49bn spent on public contracts each year.

The Cabinet Office stresses that value for money will still be paramount, but by including a bidder’s ‘social value score’ into the assessment of each contract bid, the wider positive benefits provided by businesses can be taken into account, helping to build a more resilient and diverse supplier base.

The social value model, which departments will use to assess contract bids, includes how suppliers are helping local communities recover from the impact of COVID, how they tackle economic inequality, combat climate change and reduce waste, promote equal opportunity, tackle inequality, reduce the disability employment gap, and improve health, wellbeing and community integration.

This was followed up last week by the publication of a further procurement policy note (PPN) on another aspect of supplier behaviour – in this case on whether they are paying their own suppliers on time.

The procurement of many government contracts in excess of £5m per annum will now require suppliers to demonstrate they have paid their own suppliers in accordance with contractual terms and also that they are paying 95% of invoices within 60 days. 

If they can’t do so – or can’t provide an acceptable reason and an action plan to improve –they will be excluded from bidding or renewing contracts outside limited circumstances, such as a civil emergency or non-competitive markets.

Together, these moves indicate an increasing willingness by the Government to use its buying power to promote its economic and social agenda, without – it is hoped – compromising the value for money it obtains on behalf of taxpayers.

Alison Ring, director for public sector at ICAEW, commented: “The Government is the biggest purchaser of goods and services in the UK, but many socially responsible small businesses have struggled to win contracts in the face of competition from much larger businesses with less than stellar records on social and environmental responsibility.

By tipping the scales slightly in their favour, the Government hopes that it can encourage SMEs and social enterprises to compete more effectively in winning public contracts, with the added benefit to departments of diversifying their supplier bases.

Whether these changes in procurement rules will have the desired effect is uncertain. There remain many bureaucratic obstacles in the way of smaller businesses and social enterprises winning public contracts and these are likely to need addressing too if the Government is to achieve its objectives here.” 

Copies of the new procurement policies can be found on the Cabinet Office website.

Further reading:

This article was originally published on the ICAEW website.

ICAEW chart of the week: US federal deficit

30 October 2020: The US federal government spent $3.1tn more than it received in the year to 30 September 2020, more than three times the $1.0tn deficit incurred in 2019.

Chart showing US federal deficit for the year to 30 Sep 2020. Receipts £3.4tn, deficit $3.1tn and outlays $6.5tn.

The #icaewchartoftheweek is on the $3.1tn deficit incurred by the United States federal government, according to its preliminary financial results for the 2020 fiscal year published by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, a unit of the US Department of the Treasury. 

Analysis by the US Congressional Budget Office reports that receipts of $3.4tn were 1% lower than in the previous financial year, which can broadly be split into a 6% increase in the first half from October 2019 to March 2020 and a 7% decrease in the second half of the year ending in September. 

As illustrated by the chart, the principal sources of revenue are $1.3tn in social security payroll tax deductions and $1.6tn in personal income taxes, together with $0.2tn in corporate income taxes and $0.3tn from excise taxes, customs duties, estate and gift taxes and other net receipts.

Outlays of $6.5tn in FY2020 were $2.1tn or 47% higher than in the FY2019, reflecting a 7% increase in the first half and an 87% increase in the second half. These increases were principally driven by the fiscal response to the coronavirus pandemic, including $0.6tn for small business furlough programmes, a $0.4tn increase in unemployment compensation, $0.3tn more in refundable tax credits, $0.2tn in emergency health measures and over $0.1tn for the Coronavirus Relief Fund. Other increases included $0.1tn in student loan subsidies, $0.3tn in federal reserve investments and $0.2tn in other increases, offset by a $0.1tn reduction in interest costs.

Outlays can broadly be split between $4.7tn of ‘mandatory’ spending on welfare, $0.3tn in interest costs and $1.5tn in ‘discretionary’ spending by the federal government. 

Welfare comprises spending on social security (principally pensions), Medicare and Medicaid (healthcare), veterans, income security (unemployment benefits and tax credits) and the Paycheck Protection Program for small businesses, while spending on the federal government is dominated by the $0.7tn spent on defence, followed by $0.2tn on education, $0.1tn on homeland security and justice, $0.1tn on transport and $0.4tn on everything else.

It is important to stress that these receipts and outlays relate only to the federal government and exclude what is normally in the region of $3tn in receipts and spending of state and local governments across the US. There is usually a surplus at the state and local level but this year is likely to be different as state and local tax revenues collapse and spending to tackle the pandemic locally continues to grow.

External public debt was $21.0tn at 30 September 2020, an increase of $4.2tn or 25% over the $16.8tn the US federal government owed a year previously, reflecting borrowing to fund the $3.1tn deficit and a net $1.1tn in lending, principally to businesses as part of the coronavirus response.

Even more borrowing is probable irrespective of which candidate wins the presidential election next week as the US struggles to get the pandemic under control and the increasing likelihood that Congress will pass a multi-trillion dollar stimulus bill after the election is over.

This chart was originally published on the ICAEW website.

ICAEW chart of the week: Half year public spending and receipts

23 October 2020: The gap between spending and receipts widened to £208bn in the half-year to September 2020, significantly greater than the £80bn in the first half of 2009-10 at the height of the financial crisis.

Line chart showing half-yearly spending and receipts with a shaded gap between them highlighting the deficit. A huge widening occurs in the most recent half year.

The #icaewchartoftheweek is on UK public spending and receipts in the light of the September 2020 public finance release that reported a fiscal deficit of £208bn for the six months ended 30 September 2020, comprising public spending of £567bn less receipts of £359bn.

The chart illustrates how the shortfall in receipts and public spending of £26bn (public spending £289bn – receipts £263bn) and £14bn (£303bn – £289bn) in the first and second halves of 2006-07 increased to £80bn (£347bn – £267bn) and £78bn (£375bn – £297bn) in 2009-10 before gradually declining to £31bn (£421bn – £390bn) and £8bn (£433bn – £425bn) in the first and second halves of 2018-19 respectively.

The chart highlights how deficits added up over a decade (a cumulative £1.1tn between 1 April 2008 and 31 March 2018) even as the gap between spending and receipts narrowed as well as how much the shortfall has widened in the first half of 2020-21. With a further £140bn or so shortfall expected in the second of the financial year, it will take a strong economic rebound to prevent another trillion of deficits accumulating over the coming decade.

Although the Spending Review in November will now only cover the 2021-22 financial year for current expenditure, it is expected to set capital expenditure budgets for 2022-23 as well. This will be important in giving departments confidence to get infrastructure spending projects underway as quickly as possible next year if there is to be an investment-led economic recovery.

Read more about the September 2020 public finances: Half-year deficit reaches £208bn as COVID costs continue to accumulate.

This chart was originally published on the ICAEW website.

Half-year deficit reaches £208bn as COVID costs accumulate

22 October 2020: Public finances remain on track for the worst peace-time deficit ever, thanks to lower receipts and large-scale coronavirus interventions.

The latest public sector finances reported a deficit of £36.1bn in September 2020, a cumulative total of £208.5bn for the first six months of the financial year.

Falls in VAT, corporation tax and income tax drove lower receipts, while large-scale fiscal interventions resulted in much higher levels of expenditure. Net investment is greater than last year, as planned, while the interest line has benefited from ultra-low interest rates.

Public sector net debt increased to £2,059.7bn or 103.5% of GDP, an increase of £259.2bn from the start of the financial year and £274.0bn higher than in September 2019. This reflects £50.7bn of additional borrowing over and above the deficit, most of which has been used to fund coronavirus loans to business and tax deferral measures.

Commenting on the figures Alison Ring, ICAEW Director for Public Sector, said: “The deficit of £208bn is already more than the full-year deficit at the height of the financial crisis a decade ago and remains on track to be the largest ever outside the two world wars. 

“The economic damage caused by the pandemic in the first half of the fiscal year was not as bad as originally feared, thanks in part to the extraordinary level of financial support provided by the Chancellor. However, the second wave is putting further strain on the public finances as new regional restrictions are placed on economic activity.

To help the recovery the Chancellor must take the opportunity at the Autumn Statement and Spending Round to invest in preparing infrastructure projects to start as soon as possible.”

Image of table showing public finances for month of September and six months to September together with variances from last year. Click on link to the article on the ICAEW website for a readable version.

The combination of receipts down 11%, expenditure up 34% and net investment up 37% has resulted in a deficit for the six months to September 2020 that is approaching four times the budgeted deficit of £55bn for the whole of the 2020-21 financial year set in the Spring Budget in March. This is despite interest charges being lower by 24%. The cumulative deficit is more than six times as much as for the same six-month period last year.

Cash funding (the ‘public sector net cash requirement’) for the six months was £257.8bn, compared with £7.1bn for the same period in 2019.

Interest costs have fallen despite much higher levels of debt, with extremely low interest rates benefiting both new borrowing to fund government cash requirements and borrowing to refinance existing debts as they have been repaid.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies’ recent IFS Green Budget 2020 annual pre-Budget report indicated that the deficit for the full year to March 2021 could reach £350bn or 17% of GDP.

Some caution is needed with respect to the numbers published by the ONS, which are expected to be repeatedly revised as estimates are refined and gaps in the underlying data are filled. In particular, the OBR points out that the ONS has yet to record any allowance for losses that might arise on the more than £100bn of tax deferrals, loans and guarantees provided to support businesses through the pandemic.

Image of table showing public finances for each month to September 2020 and for each month to September 2019. Click on link to the article on the ICAEW website for a readable version.

The ONS made a number of revisions to prior month and prior year fiscal numbers to reflect revisions to estimates and changes in methodology. These had the effect of reducing the reported fiscal deficit in the first five months from the £173.7bn reported last time to £172.4bn and reducing the reported deficit for 2019-20 from £55.8bn to £54.5bn.

For further information, read the public sector finances release for September 2020.

This article was originally published on the ICAEW website.

Where is the infrastructure for delivering infrastructure?

19 October 2020: How can the UK deliver on its ambitious infrastructure plans without a national infrastructure strategy, a comprehensive multi-year spending review, or an infrastructure investment bank?

It seems that everyone agrees that investing more in infrastructure is critical to the future prosperity of the UK, but how do we actually deliver those ambitions on the ground? 

After decades of underinvestment that has seen the UK fall behind many other developed, and even some developing countries, there is a great deal of consensus that a substantial amount of new investment is needed in both economic and social infrastructure right across the country. An investment-led recovery is also increasingly seen as essential to repair the economic damage caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

The UK does not score that well with only one relatively short high-speed railway, low broadband speeds across most of the country, severely congested roads, poor public transport networks outside London and the South East, a collapsing nuclear energy programme, underinvestment in hospitals, schools and care homes, and a failure to deliver enough houses. The fading glory of the on-time and on-budget delivery of the 2012 Olympics seems a long-time ago, as does the admittedly controversial PFI investment boom of the early 2000s.

A successful infrastructure programme requires many elements, starting with a clear national strategy setting out what needs to be built and how. Budget allocations for publicly funded infrastructure and a financial framework for privately funded infrastructure need to be in place well in advance. Financial institutions are required to provide finance for major infrastructure projects and to the businesses constructing them. An efficient planning system is needed that balances the economic benefits of building new assets with other interests.

Despite the enthusiasm for new investment from across the political spectrum, many of the building blocks are not yet in place. The National Infrastructure Strategy has been delayed several times and is still not published. The coronavirus pandemic has delayed the planned three-year Spending Review by yet another year, with a more limited one-year Spending Round expected this November instead. Similarly, we are still awaiting the outcome of the Infrastructure Finance Review that is expected to provide a new financial framework for private sector participation in infrastructure projects, as well as an anticipated UK successor to the European Investment Bank (EIB).

Despite this, there are some bright spots. Behind the scenes, there is a major upgrade underway of the UK’s energy transmission and distribution networks that is seeing tens of billions invested in improving the resilience and flexibility of the UK’s energy plumbing. And the UK has become a world leader in offshore wind power, with decisions taken a decade ago starting to bear fruit.

How can the UK deliver on ambitious plans to achieve carbon-neutrality while ensuring a reliable and secure energy supply, become a digital superpower and ‘level up’ deprived regions all at the same time? 

This is one of the more important debates we need to have – after all the very future of the country is at stake.

Join Katie Black, Director for Policy at the National Infrastructure Commission, Melanie Onn, Deputy Chief Executive for Renewable UK, Iain Wright, Director for Business and Industrial Strategy at ICAEW and Alison Ring, Director for Public Sector at ICAEW, to discuss the UK’s infrastructure plans at an ICAEW webinar on Thursday 22 October at 11am.

To read ICAEW’s submission to the Infrastructure Finance Review click here.

This article was originally published on the ICAEW website.

ICAEW chart of the week: UK debt financing requirement

16 October 2020: The Institute for Fiscal Studies annual pre-Budget report forecasts a doubling to £1.5tn in the amount of debt to be raised by the UK Government over the next five years.

UK debt financing requirement by year from 2020-21 to 2024-25, adding up to £757bn (March 2020 budget), £1,305bn (optimistic), £1,536bn (central) and £1,789bn (pessimistic forecast).

Although the Budget itself may have been delayed, the IFS Green Budget 2020 has been published on schedule, with a wealth (if that is the right word in the current context) of analysis on the economy and the public finances. 

With £201bn in discretionary measures and a £95bn economic impact from the coronavirus pandemic, the IFS is forecasting that the deficit will reach £350bn in the current financial year. At 17% of GDP, this is a level never before seen in the UK outside of the two world wars. 

Unfortunately, the effect of the pandemic on public finances will not be restricted to this financial year. Even if the economy recovers in 2021, or more likely in 2022, tax revenues will be significantly lower and spending significantly higher than they were previously expected to be.

This is perhaps best highlighted by looking at the UK Government’s gross financing requirement – the amount that the UK Debt Management Office (DMO) will be tasked with raising from external debt investors over the next five years to finance the shortfall in taxes compared with spending (the deficit), to finance business and other lending and to repay existing debts as they fall due. This is forecast by the IFS to double to £1.5tn in their central forecast, within a range from £1.3tn in a more optimistic scenario to £1.8tn in a more pessimistic scenario.

As the IFS points out, the enormous amount of debt being issued means that even small differences in financing costs will have a very large impact on the public finances. This is despite the sizeable proportion of debt being issued with long maturities (as long as 50 years in some case) that are locking in extremely low interest rates for decades to come.

Reducing interest costs on debt has provided the Chancellor with room to provide the unprecedented levels of financial support to the UK economy that we saw over the summer. The prospect of negative nominal rates could see investors paying the Government rather than the other way round, providing headroom for further interventions.

There is a downside, of course. The ‘good times’ of ultra-low interest rates may not last for ever, and with a central debt forecast at 31 March 2025 of 112% of GDP significantly higher than the 35% of GDP before the financial crisis a dozen years ago the exposure to changes in interests is that much more significant.

To find out more about the latest forecasts for the economy and the impact that will have on the public finances, please do read the IFS Green Budget 2020.

This chart was originally published by ICAEW.

ICAEW chart of the week: Local government in England

9 October 2020: The complex structure of regional and local authorities in England is just begging for reform, but will the rumoured plan to abolish county and district councils fix it for good?

Chart with three rings: regional tier, county or unitary tier and then district council tier, showing lots and lots of councils in England.

Local government in England, as illustrated by the #icaewchartoftheweek, is pretty complex with eight different types of regional or principal authority and a patchwork quilt of different tiers of government across the country.

This complex system comprises areas without a regional tier of government involving unitary authorities or county & district councils, and those with combined authorities atop unitary authorities or metropolitan boroughs (and one county and its districts) and the Greater London Authority atop 32 London boroughs and the City of London. (This excludes the 9,000 or so town, village and other forms of parish councils in England, mostly outside the major urban areas).

This complexity makes it very difficult for the Government to interact with local authorities in the absence of a consistent model of local government or a country-wide regional tier of government to act as intermediary. This contrasts (for example) with the federal system in Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel regularly speaks to the leaders of the 16 German states, who in turn deal with the local authorities in their areas. Similarly (although not formally federal), France has 13 mainland and 5 overseas regional administrations that President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Jean Castex can talk to and who will deal with their constituent provinces.

The UK Government can and does communicate with London Mayor Sadiq Khan, Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, West Midlands Mayor Andy Street, West Yorkshire Chair Susan Hinchcliffe, Liverpool City Region Mayor Steve Rotherham, Sheffield City Region Mayor Dan Jarvis, North East Chair Iain Malcolm, West of England Mayor Tim Bowles, Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Mayor James Palmer, North of Tyne Mayor Jamie Driscoll and Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen, each of whom can represent their constituent local authorities. But, they only represent 44% of the English population, with a further 24 county council leaders and 46 unitary authority leaders to speak to cover the remaining 56%. That is a pretty big Zoom call, assuming borough and unitary leaders within the regional authority areas don’t also insist on joining in.

The delayed announcement of a plan to abolish the 25 county and 188 district councils and replace them with between 25 and 40 new unitary authorities (perhaps with some mergers with existing unitary authorities) will go some way to rationalising the existing system by going to a single tier of principal local authorities. This would bring local public services together under one roof and save money, albeit there are some concerns about whether some of the new authorities would be too remote from the local citizenry.

However, this is still likely to leave English local government reform unfinished with over half the country without a regional tier of government. Will the Government want to continue with its existing organic approach of combined authority formation or go for a more comprehensive programme to establish regional authorities across the whole country, similar to the French reforms of the 1980s?

This chart was originally published by ICAEW.

ICAEW chart of the week: Quarterly GDP

2 October 2020: The latest statistics for the UK economy generate a grim graphic for the #icaewchartoftheweek.

Chart showing GDP by quarter from 2018 Q1 to 2020 Q2: £528bn, £533bn, £539bn, £542bn, £548bn, £551bn, £556bn, £558bn, £556bn, £476bn.

According to latest numbers from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) released on 30 September 2020, GDP for the second quarter to June 2020 fell to £476bn, a 14.5% fall in economic activity compared with the previous quarter, which in turn was 0.5% lower than the last quarter of 2019.

This week’s chart not only illustrates the damage done by the coronavirus pandemic to the economy in the first half of 2020, but also highlights how poorly the economy was performing in past couple of years, with seasonally-adjusted GDP increasing by an average of 0.8% a quarter from £528bn in the first quarter of 2018 to £558bn in the fourth quarter of 2019.

These percentage changes do not take account of the effect of inflation, with the ONS reporting a headline fall of 19.8% in real GDP in the second quarter and a 2.5% drop in the first quarter on a chained volume basis (the method used by the statisticians at the ONS to adjust for the effects of changing prices and output levels across the economy). Average quarterly real economic growth in the seven quarters to Q4 2019 was just 0.3% and around half that on a per capita basis.

The two pieces of good news are that the decline in GDP in the second quarter was less steep than originally feared, while we also know that the economy has recovered to a significant extent in the third quarter to 30 September, although we won’t know by how much until the statistics are published in November. Unfortunately, with local lockdowns across the country, the likelihood is that it will be sometime before our lives return to normal.

This chart was originally published on the ICAEW website.

Cancelled Budget must not be allowed to delay infrastructure plans

29 September 2020: Recently published figures show that the Government burnt through £224bn in the five months to August 2020. This should not stand in the way of an investment-led economic recovery, according to ICAEW’s Public Sector team.

The latest public sector finances for August 2020 published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on Friday 25 September 2020 reported a deficit of £35.9bn in August 2020, a cumulative total of £173.7bn for the first five months of the financial year.

Falls in VAT, corporation tax and income tax drove lower receipts, while large-scale fiscal interventions resulted in much higher levels of expenditure. Net investment is greater than last year, as planned, while the interest line has benefited from ultra-low interest rates.

Public sector net debt increased to £2,023.9bn or 101.9% of GDP, an increase of £223.4bn from the start of the financial year and £249.5bn higher than in August 2019. This reflects £49.7bn of additional borrowing over and above the deficit, most of which has been used to fund coronavirus loans to business and tax deferral measures.

Image of table showing public sector finances for month of August and for 5 months to August 2020, together with variances against last year. Click on the link at the end of the article for a readable version.

The combination of receipts down 12%, expenditure up 35% and net investment up 40% has resulted in a deficit for the five months to August 2020 that is more than three times the budgeted deficit of £55bn for the whole of the 2020-21 financial year set in the Spring Budget in March, despite interest charges being lower by 34%. The cumulative deficit is more than six times as much as for the same five-month period last year.

Cash funding (the ‘public sector net cash requirement’) for the five months was £224.0bn, compared with £5.8bn for the same period in 2019.

Interest costs have fallen despite much higher levels of debt, with extremely low interest rates benefiting both new borrowing to fund government cash requirements and borrowing to refinance existing debts as they have been repaid.

Some caution is needed with respect to the numbers published by the ONS, which are expected to be repeatedly revised as estimates are refined and gaps in the underlying data are filled. In particular, the OBR points out that the ONS has yet to record any allowance for losses that might arise on the more than £100bn of tax deferrals, loans and guarantees provided to support businesses through the pandemic. 

Alison Ring FCA, director for public sector at ICAEW, commented: “The government continued to haemorrhage cash in August, despite furloughed employees returning to work and the warm weather encouraging people to spend money outside their homes. The Chancellor’s Eat Out to Help Out subsidy may have hit the headlines, but at £522m it was only a fraction of the total spending in the year to date of £470.5bn. Large sums were also spent on Test & Trace and PPE, as well on fiscal interventions such as the coronavirus job retention scheme.

While the decision to postpone the Budget until the Spring is understandable given the economic uncertainties as we enter the next phase of the pandemic, we hope that this will not mean further delays for the National Infrastructure Strategy and the green-lighting of infrastructure projects across the country, which will be vital for an investment-led economic recovery.”

Image of table showing public sector finances for each month to August 2020 and to August 2019. Click on the link at the end of the article for a readable version.

The ONS made several revisions to prior month and prior year fiscal numbers to reflect revisions to estimates and changes in methodology and classification. These had the effect of reducing the reported fiscal deficit in 2019/20 from £59.7bn to £55.8bn and in 2018/19 from £41.0bn to £38.8bn. There was a reduction of £12.7bn in the estimated deficit in the first four months of the current financial year from that reported last month primarily because of overestimating central government procurement in those months.

This article was originally published by ICAEW.

ICAEW chart of the week: public sector employment

25 September 2020: The #icaewchartoftheweek is on headcount in the public sector, which increased by 115,000 to 5,508,000 in the year to June 2020.

Chart showing change in headcount from June 2019 to 2020: NHS +88k, other health & social work -7k, education -9k, police +12k, forces +4k, civil service +11k, public admin +8k, other +8k = +115k.

Employment on a full-time equivalent (FTE) basis also increased over the last year, with an increase of 118,000 from 4,485,000 FTEs in June 2019 to 4,603,000 FTEs in June 2020.

The NHS workforce jumped by 55,000 in the first six months of 2020 and by 88,000 in the year to June as the coronavirus pandemic accelerated recruitment of health workers. The NHS is the one part of the public sector that has seen consistent headcount growth over the last decade, with 1,782,000 employees at June 2020 compared with 1,558,000 a decade ago. This has been partly offset by a fall in other health and social workers of 7,000 to 208,000 in the year to June, which is 191,000 lower than the 399,000 employed in June 2010.

Public employees working in education also fell by 9,000 to 1,487,000 in June 2020, bringing the total fall over the last decade to 198,000, driven by a combination of cuts in education funding and the reclassification of further education colleges to outside the public sector.

Police numbers (including civilian staff) have started to increase again, with a headcount of 261,000 in June 2020, up 12,000 over a year previously. However, this is still significantly below the 292,000 that were employed in June 2010. HM Forces numbers also started to increase again after a long period of decline, with the approximately 4,000 service personally added to reach 156,000 still substantially less than the 197,000 serving in June 2010.

Civil Service numbers increased by 11,000 over the year to 459,000, with Brexit being a major contributor to the increase from the low-point of 416,000 employed in June 2016, by still significantly below the 517,000 civil servants working in June 2010. Other public administration headcount increased by 8,000 to 614,000 in June 2020, down from 682,000 a decade previously.

The number of other public sector workers increased by 8,000 in the year to 541,000. This is substantially below the 1,105,000 employed in other categories in June 2010, principally because ten years ago the public sector included housing associations, Royal Mail, Direct Line, Lloyds Banking Group and Northern Rock all of which have since been reclassified to the private sector. (Royal Bank of Scotland and Bradford & Bingley remain in the public sector).

Adjusted for reclassifications, total public sector headcount is 215,000 lower than it was a decade ago, reflecting an increase of 224,000 in NHS employees and a net decline of 439,000 across the rest of the public sector.

With Brexit preparations accelerating and the NHS under severe pressure as we approach winter, it is likely public sector employment will continue to rise in the near future.

This chart was originally published on the ICAEW website.