The second annual CSW trust survey polled public servants across 15 departments and agencies about their experience working with seven types of organisations. Photo: File.
A survey carried out by the Civil Service World (CSW) website has found that trust in the wider United Kingdom public sector has declined among public servants, with officials less likely to say they can find common goals with colleagues.
Officials were also less likely to describe public sector colleagues as honest and reliable, although they still perceived them as more honest than commercial partners and public servants in other areas.
The second annual CSW trust survey polled public servants across 15 departments and agencies about their experience working with seven types of organisations.
These were local government, commercial partners, the voluntary and community sector, academia, the wider public service, non-departmental public bodies and executive agencies and other government departments.
Officials were asked whether they found it easy to work with colleagues in each given sector; if they believed them to be open and honest; if they were able to find common ground and goals with them; if they shared common values, and if the people in the sector were reliable.
Of more than 700 people surveyed, just under two-thirds (62 per cent) said they deemed partners in the wider public sector to be “open and honest”. This compared favourably with commercial partners (seen as open and honest by 51 per cent of respondents).
However, it represents a large drop from the 2022 survey, in which 72 per cent of respondents described the wider public sector as open and honest.
The survey also showed a large drop in the proportion of public servants who said colleagues in the wider public sector were reliable — from 71 per cent in 2022 to 65 per cent in 2023 — and those who said they shared common ground with those colleagues — from 81 per cent in 2022 to 69 per cent in 2023.
CSW also asked public servants to share the biggest barriers to collaboration with different partners.
In every case, at least half the respondents said a lack of understanding around how the different organisations work impedes collaboration.
This was especially the case with local government, where nearly two-thirds named this as a barrier.
London, 29 September 2023
