FT: UK Treasury offers up to £100,000 for resignation

The British Treasury is preparing to significantly downsize its staff and is offering employees severance pay of up to £100,000 for voluntary redundancy.

According to the Financial Times, this is part of a broader plan by Finance Minister Rachel Reeves, who wants to reduce the number of ministry staff from around 2,100 to 300 by 2030. The cuts are part of a nationwide strategy to reduce administrative costs at Whitehall by 16 percent.

The department expects that if voluntary departures are not sufficient, it may also resort to compulsory redundancies across its offices in London, Darlington, Norwich, and Edinburgh.

Reuters has not yet independently verified the information, and the Treasury did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

However, the department itself told the Financial Times that it is currently the largest in its history in terms of personnel and considers this period of relative stability to be an appropriate time to return to a more "normal" size of government.

(reuters, pir)