Next month, former Reed Elsevier chief executive Ian Smith is due to report to government on how it can move 10% of civil service jobs in London and the southeast to other parts of the UK.

The report has been dubbed “Lyons part II”, after a report by Sir Michael Lyons in 2004 that proposed the relocation of 20,000 civil service posts from the south-east.

The government announced this latest review in its December report Smarter Government.

The property world is watching Smith. A recommendation of more civil servant relocations could bring public sector occupiers for regional office schemes. But there is scepticism about the opacity of the process and whether there will be genuine relocations from London, or just a “reallocation”. Moving a post means just reallocating work, which is easier than relocating staff members.

Smith will also tackle this issue of semantic transparency, so that the success of the relocation agenda can be gauged.

The Office of Government Commerce says it cannot give any more details at this stage. However, the 10% figure suggests that this latest wave of relocations is less ambitious than Lyons.

Last month, the Office of National Statistics published its annual report on the size of the civil service. In 2009, there were 137,575 civil servants in London and the southeast, so relocating 10% would mean moving nearly 14,000 staff. This is less than the 24,000 the government says it moved in the first phase of relocation.

However, Ian Southall, partner in the public sector team at Drivers Jonas says that, although 24,000 posts have moved, the actual number of people relocated is in the “hundreds rather than thousands”.

“Posts is one thing but the real challenge is getting the people out,” he says.

Andrew Tice, partner in the public sector team at King Sturge, agrees that the new review should provide clarity on what it means to move a person and what it means to move a post: “It’s another Lyons but focusing on posts and transparency going forward, so there isn’t this smoke and mirrors about what is a post and what is a job,” he says.

Regional developers will hope it is people that move and not just posts.

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