Up to 600 civil service staff may be redeployed due to Brexit workload

Officers at the Department for International Development were told this morning up to 600 staff may have to be redeployed.

For the civil service Brexit is becoming very real indeed.

Officials at the Department for International Development (DFID), which isn't much affected by Brexit in a direct sense, were told this morning that up to 600 of their number - out of just 3,000 - may have to be redeployed to departments that are suffering from staff shortages because of their Brexit workloads.

One department they are likely to be seconded to, they were told, is Michael Gove's Department for Environment, Food and Regional Affairs.

A source at DFID tells me that it won't be till the new year that anxious DFID civil servants know their fate.

One department the DFID are likely to be seconded to, they were told, is Michael Gove's Department. Credit: PA

Another source told me that this unsought Brexit merry-go-round for civil servants will affect every Whitehall department in some way.

There is a widespread sense that planning, for both no-deal and a deal-based Brexit, is far too last minute and chaotic.

Officials have no idea how long their Brexit related transfers would last or even what they are likely to be asked to do - they've just been warned to prepare themselves for wholesale change.