The final delayed annual report of the Public Services Commission (PSC) has been published - and shows the number of government workers has continued to rise.

Delays in publishing the PSC annual reports for the last three years were the subject of a tense exchange in Tynwald in December.

Former PSC chair Kate Lord-Brennan accused ex health minister Lawrie Hooper of having been a ‘Minister of Double Standards’ when he pressed for the release of the documents.

A combined report for the years 2021-22 and 2022-23 was published on the Tynwald website in December and now the report for 2023-2024 has been published too.

It shows that there were 4,140.61 full-time equivalent PSC staff in government departments, boards and offices - an increase of 140.81, equating to 3.52%, from 2023.

Of these staff, 1,062.97 FTE employees are based within Manx Care.

The average age is 47, three years higher than the UK civil service.

In 2023-24, there were a total of 296.6 FTE leavers across the PSC, equating to 7.15% of the workforce. The main reason was voluntary resignation, followed by retirement.

Manx Care saw the highest number of new PSC hires, with 121.5 FTE in total.

The 12-month average percentage of worktime lost for all PSC staff for 2023-24 was 5.62% - an increase from 2022-23 when it was 4.63%.

During the year, six conciliated settlement agreements were made with departing civil servants, at a cost of £269,365.

This is way down from the 28 the previous year, which were made at cost of more than £1.9m.

The previous annual report had called for a legislative cap on such pay-outs which can be made for a variety of reasons including voluntary redundancy, compulsory redundancy and severance payments, and the Mutually Agreed Resignation Scheme (MARS).