A Brilliant Organisation - Praise for the MOD Civil Service and what it does

The MOD Civil Service is the fourth arm of Defence, an organisation full of dedicated professional people who do an amazing job in helping keep the UK safe. Yet it is an organisation that is criminally understood by people, and much maligned by others who see it as a refuge for penpushers and officialdom, more Vogon poet than Vanguard class.

Humphrey makes no effort to hide his bias here. He regards the MOD Civil Service as an organisation that has brilliant people doing exceptional work, and who encapsulate the very best of what it means to work in Public Service. It deserves a far better press than it gets. This article is an attempt to level the playing field after comments on social media complaining about the 56,000 civil servants in the MOD and wondering what they all did. 

This article is intended to be a primer which tries to explain what the MOD is, what its people do and some of the challenges they face. It is essentially ‘MOD 101’, and the aim of it is longer term to be the go to link for when people attack the Civil Service as a waste of resources. It will form the basis of a longer series over the next few weeks which looks at what the MOD does, some myths about it, challenges to the workforce and some guides to how to work best with Civil Servants to build a brilliant working relationship.

What is the MOD Civil Service?

At its simplest the MOD Civil Service (MOD CS) is the organisation that manages the civilian cohort in Defence. It delivers a wide range of tasks from industrial work through to complex policy advice. It is based across the UK, with civilian staff working in almost every location where UK military personnel can be found, including on a lot of operations abroad.

Headed by the Permanent Under Secretary (Stephen Lovegrove), the organisation is currently 56,000 strong, having reduced from approximately 120,000 staff at the turn of the century. Under the 2015 SDSR the plan is to reduce even further to approximately 41,000 staff.

In practical terms the organisation is organised into a variety of bodies and structures, which are as follows (source is Nov 2017 statistics, can be found HERE: )

Organisation	Staff
Top Level Budgetary Areas (e.g. FLC / PJQ etc)	35,170
Royal Fleet Auxiliary	1,910
DE&S	11,070
Trading Funds and Executive Agencies	4,440
Locally Employed Civilians	4,280
Total	56,920

Industrial / Non Industrial Staff

Industrial Staff comprise a significant chunk of manpower (roughly 10%) of the organisation. This is a collection of staff including firefighters, storemen, dockyard workers and other predominantly manual labour or other skilled roles that need to be done to support base operations. All of these staff are classed as civil servants, despite not working in what the public imagine civil service roles to be.

Industrial Staff are a vital part of the MOD – they deliver a lot of critical practical support without which the Armed Forces can’t work. For example there are over 700 firefighters who deliver support to airfields around the UK and abroad, with a critical life saving role.

Others work in dockyards or munitions depots ensuring stores and ammunition is ready for issue, able to be deployed and works when employed. This sort of work is critical to give troops the logistics support they require to fight and win.

Non-Industrial staff are the more traditional officer workers associated with Civil Service roles. This title covers everything from junior administration roles in a small base through to the PUS in Whitehall. This area is a catch all title which encompasses an enormous diversity of roles from clerical duties to intelligence analysis, and helps reflect the breadth of roles filled by the MOD.

Why is DE&S Separate?

DE&S is an organisation that used to be a full part of the MOD, subject to the same TACOS and salary limits as other organisations. Today it is at arms length from the rest of the MOD, and while its staff are still civil servants, they operate to a very different salary and grading structure to the MOD.

It has significant freedoms to pay different rates at different bands to try and attract staff in with specific skills (particularly project managers and other specialist staff) and to be a hub for all major acquisition and support. It is slowly moving apart from the mainstream MOD, and unlike in previous years where a steady interchange between posts in DE&S and MOD occurred, it is increasingly rare to find civil servants who go to Bristol for a post, then go back into the MOD. There is a risk that over time this will lead to increasing divergence between the two organisations.

It is also important to understand that there are not 11,000 civilians working in Abbey Wood on buying stuff. This figure covers a massive spread of sites and roles, ranging from project management through to work in dockyards, dealing with cyber and communications sites in Corsham or small transmitters around the country. It covers the local support to logistics and helps cover every aspect of the lifecycle of equipment from project initiation through to its disposal – these staff work across an enormously diverse range of posts to support this work.

What are Trading Funds / Executive Agencies?

These bodies are organisations that have been split outside the mainstream MOD to provide specialist roles, and often do revenue generating work. For example they can include bodies like DSTL, home to UK specialist research on defence scientific issues at places like Porton Down. Or it can include the Hydrographic Office, which produces world leading charts and geospatial data to help provide UK forces with critical information. Until a few years ago the Met Office was part of the MOD too, although this has now been moved to BEIS.

Who are Locally Employed Civilians?

LECs are staff employed at UK defence facilities overseas, ranging from major garrisons like in Cyprus, through to staff working in a Defence Attaches office. The phrase LEC is a catch all title covering the multitude of support work that’s needed to ensure UK military deployed overseas have all the local support they need to do their job.

This number changes regularly depending on where UK forces are deployed, so in recent years numbers have fallen due to the drawdown in Germany and elsewhere, but may increase as other deployments begin.

What do all these people do?

It is easy to imagine when looking at the figure of 56,000 civil servants that all of them do little beyond get in the way of the military. In fact there is no such thing as a typical civil servant or role.

In broad terms the role of the non-industrial staff is to provide support to the armed forces through a broad range of roles. This is incredibly diverse, and ranges from providing local clerical support in a unit (so for example doing the admin work in an Army barracks) to policy advice to a Minister. 

In broad terms roughly 40% of MOD staff are classed as Band E, which is the grades covering traditional clerical and administration roles, often based in a unit as a clerk, or working as a teams admin support role. These staff play a key role in ensuring bills are paid, travel claims processed and general staff work carried out. None of this is necessarily highbrow and punchy work, but it is an essential part of keeping Defence going.  A further 20% of roles are at the Band D level, which covers the first real management responsibilities, such as leading small teams or overseeing support to the system.

A further 30% of staff are at the Band C level, which is best described as the area where people develop deep professional experience in specialist areas. Band Cs’ are the workhorses for a lot of policy development work – for example running a bilateral relations desk in London overseeing the policy for relationships with another nation, or acting as the lead for a media desk or financial roles. There is enormous variety of roles for this level, with staff working in everything from policy development to intelligence analysis to financial scrutiny.

Above this is the Band B and Senior Civil Service Role (roughly 7% of all staff). These roles are about providing senior leadership, management of teams and policy direction, as well as taking responsibility for delivery and results. This level is where ‘Bernard’ and ‘Sir Humphrey’ sat in the BBC Yes Minister series, perhaps helping explain why public imagination of what the Civil Service does is so stereotyped.

A Life in the Day of the MOD Civil Service…

In practical terms it is hard to describe a typical civil servant due to the variety of work done, and where it is done. An E grade working in a barracks in Arbroath will have a totally different day to a B grade deployed in the Middle East on operations. There is no such thing as a typical civil servant.  The roles are varied and diverse, but all of them link in to supporting Defence outputs in one way or another. A better description would be to talk through a very small snapshot what the MOD civil service will be doing on a typical Monday:

0vernight there will civil servants on duty across the country, some working on shift at various sites supporting logistics efforts, or provision of fire and rescue cover. There will be duty staff at various major HQs’ keeping a wary eye on various issues, while in Head Office there will have been staff on duty all weekend supporting Ministers and the Press Office. Overseas deployed staff will have worked the whole weekend in support of Policy and intelligence work without a break. At sea the Royal Fleet Auxiliary staff will have been deployed globally helping keep the Royal Navy at sea.

As the day starts the MOD comes fully to life. Across the country a variety of unit admin offices will open up, processing the plethora of claims and paperwork needed to keep an organisation of nearly 200,000 regular and reservist military personnel going. This will range from pay and travel claims to support housing issues or recruiting concerns.

• Major HQs will see staff begin the daily or weekly update briefs, providing intelligence assessments on weekend developments, preparing written briefings for Ministers and the Service Chiefs on what has gone on, and what this means.

• A finance cell will be focused on working with a major unit to ensure that planned expenditure for the year makes sense, and that money is allocated properly to keep the unit able to deploy for 12 months and not blown in the first month of the year.

• Private Offices will start to talk to their Ministers, preparing for a long day of meetings and briefings on key issues, and communicating this to the wider department, ensuring the Ministers wishes are carried out.

• Defence Intelligence will spend the day working on threat assessments and production of highly classified briefings that ensure the armed forces are well informed on risks and challenges, and can consider how to counter them.

• Across the country the DE&S will be working to move logistics convoys of equipment to support imminent exercises, while plotting the best way to get a major shipment into a foreign port to support the planned military exercise in a foreign country.

• The teams in DE&S will be working hard to ensure that vital strategic communications facilities remain available for use, capable of communicating with strategic forces in the event of a crisis requiring an immediate response.

• In the dockyards, staff will play a key role in helping prepare a Royal Navy warship to sail for a major deployment, fully refitted, stored and ready to deploy for 9 months in an operational theatre. They will then work to bring another ship in ready to dispose of her for scrapping after a long service life.

• The teams at Defence Bills will be focused on paying invoices, ensuring that the myriad of thousands of small and medium enterprises with whom, the MOD does business get paid on time and correctly. This role is vital to ensure these companies stay in business, and that they are willing to do business with the MOD and provide equipment to support the front line.

• In Corsham a small team of civil servants will continue their role of safely managing the enormous mine complex beneath the village, with tens of miles of tunnels concealing old ammunition depots and a nuclear bunker for 4000 people.

• The team in Defence Estates will spend their day focusing on delivering the best possible estate for the armed forces to use, be it for training purposes or operations. Their work will range from reviewing where to invest funds for new build accommodation, to identifying surplus land that needs to be disposed of.

• MOD archaeologists will spend their day working with the Army to prevent ancient heritage being destroyed on Salisbury Plain and elsewhere, while looking after the thousands of listed buildings and monuments that form part of the Defence Estate.

• In the Falkland Islands, Cyprus and Gibraltar staff provide support to financial planning, estate management and project planning the upgrade of major facilities to support ongoing operations.

• In Nepal, Singapore and Brunei the teams working in the fuel depots, garrisons and recruiting depots pull together to help deliver daily outputs ranging from fuelling warships to delivering pensions to former Gurkhas in remote villages.

• In Saudi Arabia staff work closely alongside UK and Saudi Military to help deliver the Typhoon into service and support the Tornado aircraft as part of long standing arrangements dating back to the 1980s.

• In Washington DC staff will meet with representatives from Congress to discuss UK and US defence issues and work on forthcoming foreign military sales requests to help bring new equipment into service.

• Across the wider USA, dozens of civil servants will be working in many locations linked to Trident, JSF and other procurement projects trying to deliver them on time and to budget alongside their US allies.

• In Brussels and Mons the civil servants based at NATO will be working with their colleagues to help deliver improved international security by participating in various planning meetings, conferences and working to increase alliance capability.

• Overseas the deployed Policy Advisors in operational theatres will be advising PJHQ on the current operational challenges they face, and advising military teams on the policy challenges they face in delivering success, and working out how best to do this.

• Staff in DE&S will continue to focus on the efforts needed to procure tens of billions of pounds of equipment capable of working across the globe, from the depths of the ocean to outer space. They will be working with world leading industries from across the planet to bring the most advanced military equipment into service on time and on budget to meet military requirements. 

The day ends as it began, with staff on duty across the planet working alongside their military peers to help keep the country safe. Tens of thousands of civilian staff working across the world drawing on a world class collection of skills, experience and capability to help work alongside the British Armed Forces to keep the UK and its allies safe.

This is but a tiny snapshot of what happens every day across thousands of sites involving thousands of brilliant hardworking people who are proud to be civilians in defence. They may be maligned by the press and many of the public, but we should be enormously proud of them and the incredible work they do to keep us safe. They truly are  the unsung heroes in Defence.