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Findings from our survey of complaints under the Civil Service Code

If a civil servant believes that they have been asked to act in a way that conflicts with the core values of the Civil Service as expressed in the Civil Service Code, or believes that another civil servant may have acted against the values, he or she should raise their concern within their own department. If they do not receive a reasonable response, they may appeal to the Civil Service Commissioners.

In May 2008 we wrote to the Human Resources Directors of all departments and agencies whose staff are in the Home Civil Service.  We asked them to tell us how many appeals under the Civil Service Code they had dealt with during 2007-08. We explained that we wished to identify appeals that had been dealt with at departmental level and that had not involved an appeal to the Civil Service Commissioners. We also asked for brief details of any such appeals.

• We received replies from 59 departments and agencies
• 53 organisations reported that they had dealt with no appeals under the Code
• 6 organisations reported that they had dealt with appeals under the Code
• 1 reported case had led to an appeal to the Commissioners; as this is already counted in our report of cases we disregard it here
• 2 reported cases had gone to the Civil Service Appeal Board and did not therefore appear to be appeals under the Code
• 1 reported  case seemed to be clearly a human resources management issue and therefore not under the ambit of the Code
• 36 reported cases seemed to involve issues that could bring them under the ambit of the Code
• From the description supplied we considered that 9 of these cases related to human resources management issues and were therefore not under the ambit of the Code
• 27 of the reported cases seemed to concern the core values of the Civil Service and were therefore under the ambit of the Code
• The number of such cases in the year 2006-07 was 3

It is interesting to note the increase from 3 cases last year to 27 this year.

It would be rash to speculate on what exactly has led to this increase.

It may be that  organisations have put in place significantly improved procedures for tracking appeals and complaints.  Or perhaps they are more thorough and diligent at reporting. It may of course be that organisations have been more  effective at promoting the core values of the Civil Service and civil servants rights to appeal under the Civil Service Code.

It is worth noting that nearly all of these cases involved civil servants reporting their concerns about the behaviour of other civil servants. Very few of the cases related to situations where a civil servant felt that they personally had been asked to do something in conflict with the core Civil Service values.

The Survey did not reveal any widespread causes of concern. The Commissioners will repeat this exercise next year and will be interested to see if any trends begin to emerge.

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