Civil service headcount has hit a near 20-year high despite Labour vowing to crack down on numbers. 

The workforce grew by 2,000 in the first three months of this year to 550,000 people, according to official figures.

That was up from 544,000 in March last year - and a peak since the middle of 2006, when Tony Blair was still in power. 

However, the government insisted it was down to recruitment for 'operational' roles such as tax collectors and probation officers.    

Civil service headcount bottomed out at 416,000 in June 2016, the month of the EU referendum.

The total has risen steadily since then, with Brexit and Covid triggering surges, despite the Tories pledging curbs.  

In April ministers announced plans to squeeze numbers, including cutting around 2,100 staff from the Cabinet Office.

Some 1,200 roles will disappear through redundancies, while 900 will be transferred to other departments.

The latest headcount of 550,000 is nearly a third higher than it was in 2016, an increase of 134,000.

Almost 443,000 are full-time roles and the remainder are part-time positions.

The last time the quarterly headcount was higher than the current figure was in June 2006, when it stood at 553,000.

The total was on a downwards path during the second half of the 2000s and this trend continued into the 2010s until the EU referendum in 2016, after which the headcount began to climb.

It grew by 40,000 in the years between 2016 and the start of the pandemic, as thousands of people were recruited to manage the complex and lengthy Brexit process.

There was then a further jump once the pandemic was under way, as the Government hired staff to oversee huge projects such as the furlough scheme, testing for Covid-19 and the rollout of the vaccination programme.

Headcount increased by 56,000 between March 2020, when the first lockdown began, and March 2022.

By June 2024, just ahead of the general election on July 4, the total had reached at 546,000, since when the figure has increased by a further 4,000.

A government spokesman said: 'This increase is driven by recruitment to operational roles, including tax collectors and probation officers.

'As part of our Plan for Change, we are creating a more agile and productive state - reducing back-office costs to deliver savings of over £2billion by 2030 and targeting spending on front line services.

'We have already announced a new cross-government fund for exit schemes to reduce staffing numbers over the next two years, as well as introducing measures to make it quicker and easier to remove poor performers from post.'

Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Cabinet Office minister Pat McFadden said in March that Civil Service running costs would be reduced by 15 per cent by the end of the decade.

As well as abolishing quangos such as NHS England, ministers have committed to increasing the proportion of civil servants working in digital and data roles, creating a workforce 'fit for the future'.

Two Government departments together account for more than a third of the full Civil Service headcount: the Department for Work & Pensions (17.6 per cent of the total) and the Ministry of Justice (17.5 per cent).

The next largest are HM Revenue & Customs (12.9 per cent), the Ministry of Defence (10.5 per cent) and the Home Office (9.2 per cent).

These five departments together account for just over two-thirds of the total headcount.