Civil Service Pay Guidance

Thank you for contacting me about the Civil Service pay guidance.

I appreciate the hard work civil servants have undertaken in recent years to deliver more for less, which has made a significant contribution to consolidate Britain’s finances. The public sector pay cap was never intended to be a permanent or long-term solution, and I am pleased that it is no longer a requirement that public sector pay rises be limited to one per cent if Departments are able to find efficiency savings.


All civil servants deserve to be rewarded for they work they do, so that the public sector can continue to attract the brightest and best. Though I appreciate that difficult decisions were made on pay restraints, the pay cap, which formed part of the Government’s long-term economic plan, helped to get this country’s finances back under control at a time when the UK had the largest deficit in peacetime history.