Darren Jones has announced that senior civil servants will get bonuses for exceptional performance for the first time under a new pay system. darren jones said the change would reward “doers, not the talkers,” while most civil servants will receive a 3.5% pay rise.
The new approach leaves senior staff with a 2.5% base increase and holds back 1% of their pay for bonuses for the highest-performing officials. Jones also said the government will bring in an uplift of £5,000 to the lowest band of senior civil servant pay.
Darren Jones pay changes
The Cabinet Office minister and chief secretary to the prime minister said on Thursday that the government wants “higher but fewer bonuses to those exceptional senior civil servants who go above and beyond.” The announcement applies to senior staff only, while the wider civil service gets the 3.5% rise.
The pay plan goes further than the recommendation the government declined to accept for senior staff, which was a 3.5% increase. Instead, senior officials will get 2.5% up front, with the remaining 1% reserved for performance-related bonuses.
Lauren Crowley response
Lauren Crowley, assistant general secretary of the FDA, said: “Pay systems across the civil service have been blighted by a lack of meaningful pay progression for almost two decades.” She added: “The ability to move up a pay band based on delivery, skills and experience should be a feature of any well-functioning workplace.”
Jones said in January that he wanted to “rewire” the civil service, set savings of £2bn a year by 2030 and see more civil servants “shown the door” if they did not meet standards. He also said on Thursday: “This is just the start to improving our pay system … This is one of the many steps I am taking to power up the system to make sure words are turned into action and what happens in Westminster is followed through to the streets, schools and livelihoods of people in every part of the country.”
Senior civil servant bonuses
For senior staff, the practical change is that part of their annual increase will now depend on performance rather than all of it being added to base pay. For everyone below that level, the immediate change is simpler: the 3.5% rise goes through across the wider civil service.
The clearest near-term question for affected senior officials is how the bonus pool will be allocated inside the new system. Jones has set out the structure, the percentage split and the pay floor uplift, and the first test will be whether the new rules produce the performance-linked awards he described.
