THE number of workers in Oxfordshire's civil service has plummeted by more than a fifth in just five years, according to new figures.

Despite rises elsewhere across the UK the bureaucratic workforce within the county has shrunk by 23.9 per cent in half a decade.

Cabinet Office figures for Oxfordshire show there were around 2,640 civil servants in the county at the end of March.

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This is a decrease of 830, or 23.9 per cent, from five years ago and comes in spite of the civil service swelling by 3.9 per cent across the UK over the same period, to 456,400 workers.

Across the South East, however, the workforce shrank by 7.4 per cent – with the East of England the only region to see a greater decrease.

London saw a growth rate of 16 per cent, with its civil servant headcount now making up around a fifth of the UK total.

The figures include civil servants working for government departments, agencies, and non-departmental public bodies in both the UK and regional governments, where they help to develop and implement policies.

A Cabinet Office spokesman said: "Decision makers should be close to the people they serve and we want to see opportunity fairly distributed across the country.

"These statistics show there are now more civil servants than last year in Scotland, Wales, the Midlands, the South West, the North West and Yorkshire and Humberside.

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"But we are not complacent and will continue our work to make sure the civil service represents the whole of the UK, which is why we’ve committed to relocating civil service roles out of central London.”

In March, the Chancellor Rishi Sunak pledged to relocate 22,000 civil servants from London by 2030.

Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove recently said that moving government decision-making away from the capital would help “reflect the full diversity of our United Kingdom”.

The Institute for Government said there are some signs dominance is beginning to shift away from the city, with the biggest growth in civil service employment seen in the South West of England in the last year.

Sarah Nickson, a researcher at the group, said higher-ranking officials – who tend to be more concentrated in London – have been harder to move in the past.

She said: “Senior policy jobs are the kind that are needed to shift the dial on decision-making.

“And even once jobs have been relocated, you need a sustained effort to keep them there, and stop them shifting back to London.”

The Government had pledged to move bureaucrats away from the capital to help “level up” the country and bring them closer to the communities they serve.