Taxpayers are funding a ‘bloated’ civil service that now employs a staggering 28,000 people, the Mail on Sunday can reveal.

The record figure comes despite a promise by SNP ministers to slash the number of government employees.

The vast majority of these employees work from home at least three days a week leaving expensive government buildings like ‘ghost offices.’

With the public purse under unprecedented pressure, Finance Secretary Shona Robison last year pledged to dramatically reduce the number of government jobs.

However, the Scottish Mail on Sunday can reveal that staffing of the civil service has actually increased – to a new high of 27,600.

It follows our previous revelation that Scotland’s welfare agency has also grown to a record size – with more than 4,000 staff overseeing the country’s spiralling benefits bill. Critics said Ms Robison’s pledge to trim the civil service was another broken promise by the nationalists.

And they said it was wrong that, at a time of rising taxes and crumbling public services, Scots were footing the bill for an ever-growing government workforce.

Scottish Conservative finance spokesman Craig Hoy said: ‘These astonishing figures tear apart the SNP’s hollow boasts that they were finally going to tackle the costs and size of their bloated civil service.

‘Far from making the savings required, they are continuing to saddle taxpayers with an eye-watering bill for an ever-growing army of civil servants.’

The record size of the civil service is revealed in new statistics about the devolved public sector employment in Scotland – meaning public sector staff who are answerable to the Scottish, rather than UK, government.

The figures show that between the end of 2024 and the end of 2025 the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) employees within the Scottish civil service grew by 470 to 27,600.

The number includes staff in the government’s core departments and executive agencies, who are collectively responsible for overseeing Scotland’s economy, education and justice systems, plus the energy and transport networks.

The rise in staffing comes despite Ms Robison vowing last year to introduce a 20 per cent cut in civil service numbers – a reduction she called ‘significant’ but ‘more than achievable’. Since 2019, the size of the Scotland’s civil service overall has leapt by 35 per cent, equivalent to 7,200 extra full-time staff added to the payroll over the past six years.

Scotland’s most senior civil servant is Permanent Secretary Joe Griffin who took on the role last April on a basic annual salary of £175,000. 

Last year we reported that taxpayers were footing the bill for no fewer than 73 civil servant bosses earning more than £100,000 a year. 

The new staffing figures also show how much the devolved public sector as a whole has grown in recent years – with a record 471,000 staff in 2025, compared to 427,300 at the end of 2019.

Included within that are the staff of the Scottish NHS – which has seen its workforce rise from 142,500 to 163,200. Over the same period, however, the number of staff in the police and fire service dropped from 27,400 to 26,900.

Last night the Scottish Government said that measures were in place to manage staff numbers through reduced recruitment.

A spokesperson said: ‘As previously stated, as part of plans to reform public services and reduce costs, recruitment controls are in place in the Scottish Government.’

The SNP declined to discuss directly the increased number of civil servants, but the party's Paul McLennan said: ‘Unlike the Tories, Scotland has balanced its budget every year under the SNP and we will continue to manage the public finances prudently.’