Report

A mid-career fast stream

This report from UK think tank Re:State outlines how a mid-career fast stream would work. 

The challenges facing the public sector are daunting, but for many people that’s why they want to work in government. Civil service roles come with the chance to make a real difference to people’s lives, and some of the best and most exciting jobs in the country are in Whitehall.

But for a country whose leaders so often say that they want “the best and the brightest” to come and work in government, the government doesn’t make it easy for them to do so. For many people the civil service still feels like a ‘closed shop’ which promotes its own, and despite years of attempts to open it up to people from the outside the profession has struggled to shake this image and the reality that underpins it.

Re:State’s 2024 paper Making the grade: prioritising performance in Whitehall described a “missing middle”, where the civil service found it particularly difficult to attract exceptionally talented ‘mid-career’ applicants to work in Whitehall. We recommended a Mid-Career Fast Stream to fill this gap, providing a single front door with a curated programme designed to attract the best and the brightest.

Today Re:State has published an outline of how A Mid-Career Fast Stream would work – as a two-year programme for 50 successful candidates, supported by senior civil service mentors and a world-class development offer, to progress them rapidly to the standard of being promoted to Deputy Director-level on completion. It includes a job advert and curriculum design which can be directly implemented by the Cabinet Office.