[1] As in other states that employ the Westminster political system, the Civil Service — often known by the metonym of Whitehall — forms an inseparable part of the British government.

the incorruptible spinal column of EnglandThe Offices of State grew in England, and later the United Kingdom centred around the street Whitehall, hence the metonym.

In the 18th century, in response to the growth of the British Empire and economic changes, institutions such as the Office of Works and the Navy Board grew large.

The East India Company provided a model for Stafford Northcote, private Secretary to Gladstone who, with Charles Trevelyan, drafted the key report in 1854.

[11] The Northcote–Trevelyan Report recommended a permanent, unified, politically neutral civil service, with appointments made on merit, and a clear division between staff responsible for routine ("mechanical") and those engaged in policy formulation and implementation ("administrative") work.

A Civil Service Commission was set up in 1855 to oversee open recruitment and end patronage as Parliament passed an Act "to relieve the East India Company from the obligation to maintain the College at Haileybury".

This was attributed to its success in removing corruption, delivering public services, even under stress of war, and responding effectively to political change.

Patrick Diamond argues: The Northcote-Trevelyan model was characterised by a hierarchical mode of Weberian bureaucracy; neutral, permanent and anonymous officials motivated by the public interest; and a willingness to administer policies ultimately determined by ministers.

There was a concern (illustrated in C. P. Snow's Strangers and Brothers series of novels) that technical and scientific expertise was mushrooming, to a point at which the "good all-rounder" culture of the administrative civil servant with a classics or other arts degree could no longer properly engage with it: as late as 1963, for example, the Treasury had just 19 trained economists.

The times were, moreover, ones of keen respect for technocracy, with the mass mobilisation of war having worked effectively, and the French National Plan apparently delivering economic success.

And there was also a feeling which would not go away, following the war and the radical social reforms of the 1945 Labour government, that the so-called "mandarins" of the higher civil service were too remote from the people.

He found that administrators were not professional enough, and in particular lacked management skills; that the position of technical and scientific experts needed to be rationalised and enhanced; and that the service was indeed too remote.

His 158 recommendations included the introduction of a unified grading system for all categories of staff, a Civil Service College and a central policy planning unit.

He also said that control of the service should be taken from the Treasury, and given to a new department, and that the "fast stream" recruitment process for accessing the upper echelons should be made more flexible, to encourage candidates from less privileged backgrounds.

[citation needed] The Civil Service College equipped generalists with additional skills, but did not turn them into qualified professionals as ENA did in France.

Margaret Thatcher came to office in 1979 believing in free markets as a better social system in many areas than the state: government should be small but active.

Meanwhile, Michael Heseltine was introducing a comprehensive system of corporate and business planning (known as MINIS) first in the Department of the Environment and then in the Ministry of Defence.

Progress initially was sluggish, but in due course MINIS-style business planning became standard, and delegated budgets were introduced, so that individual managers were held much more accountable for meeting objectives, and for the first time for the resources they used to do so.

Performance-related pay began in December 1984, was built on thereafter, and continues to this day, though the sums involved have always been small compared to the private sector, and the effectiveness of PRP as a genuine motivator has often been questioned.

Next, shortly after Thatcher left office, in July 1991, a new programme of market-testing of central government services began, with the White Paper Competing for Quality (Cm 1730).

Five-yearly or three-yearly policy and finance reviews of all agencies and other public bodies were instituted, where the first question to be answered (the "prior options exercise") was why the function should not be abolished or privatised.

In 1995 the decision was taken to privatise the Chessington Computer Centre, HMSO, the Occupational Health & Safety Agency and Recruitment & Assessment Services.

The programme was greeted with some derision, and it is true that the compensation sometimes hardly seemed worth the effort of claiming, and that the service standards were rarely set with much consumer input.

[24] In July 2014 it was announced that Kerslake would step down and Heywood would take the title of Head of the HCS while John Manzoni would be Chief Executive of the Civil Service.

Simon Case succeeded Mark Sedwill as Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Home Civil Service in 2020 until resigning in December 2024 on health grounds.

The PSMG considers issues of strategic importance to the Civil Service as a whole, as well as providing corporate leadership where a single position is required across all government departments.

[44] The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government of 2010–2015 had proposed introducing a more American style system where senior civil servants, such as permanent secretaries, became political appointees.

[51] In addition to civil servants, special advisers are also covered by the code, except, due to the nature of the role, for the requirements for objectivity and impartiality.

NB – XXX is standing in for The lingua franca is to describe civil servants, and in particular their grades, predominantly through a lens of administrative activity (as in the current structure of the table above), but in practice the civil service has, and always had, a number of subdivisions, with the Historic Grades having an additional designator (usually omitted for senior managers, but included from middle and junior managers) as shown as "xxx", with the major groupings being: The Current Structure identifies[66] a number of distinct professional groupings: Recruitment data from the 2018 Civil Service Fast Stream process showed that white applicants were 15 times more likely to be recruited than black candidates.

The series portrays a modernised version of the interactions between the Civil Service and the Government (chiefly in the form of special advisers), as well as the media's involvement in the process.