Top civil servant told '˜figures must be there' on BIS closure

Martin Donnelly, Permanent Secretary of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), was described as being ‘evangelical’ in his decision to move high quality jobs to London by Conservative MP David Mowat, as he went before an influential committee of MPs for the first time.

With £350m in departmental savings to make, Mr Donnelly said the executive board decided it was best to move all policy jobs to London and said the calculations were based on efficiency savings of having people working in one place.

Up to 250 jobs are set to be lost in Sheffield when the department proposes to shut its doors in 2018.

When asked what the exact cost of moving people out of Sheffield was, Mr Donnelly said there was no analysis available yet for the closure of the office or staff redundancies. He was also unable to say how many of the posts moved to London are occupied by those working on Government’s Northern Powerhouse project.

Former Labour minister Caroline Flint, MP for the Don Valley, asked if there was analysis available on whether the Sheffield team’s expertise on the further education sector would be lost if their office closes.

He replied he’d had a discussion at senior levels and was confident further education delivery was not at risk.

Mr Donnelly said he needs to run a sustainable department and didn’t become a civil servant ‘to go around closing offices’ and would recommend other options if they were viable.

Chair of the Public Accounts Committee Meg Hillier disputed that centralising staff in London made better financial sense and insisted the cost benefit figures ‘must be there’.

She said she didn’t understand how it was cheaper to run services from a ‘very high rent building in London when you’ve got very people with institutional knowledge who are cheaper to employ in Sheffield’.

Mr Donnelly said: “It’s about the efficiency with which we can work when we have people in one place.”

During the hearing Ms Flint said the proportion of civil service jobs based in London has increased from 16% to 18% in the last five years.