Catalogue description Records of Recruitment and Appointment Departments

Before 1961, much of the work of encouraging development overseas was done by the Colonial Office, the British Council and other United Kingdom departments by means of finding British experts to serve with overseas governments, or to work on British or internationally financed projects outside of the UK. Experts were recruited from central and local government, from industry, and from schools, colleges and universities.

This work was taken over by the Department of Technical Co-operation on its establishment in July 1961, and passed to the Ministry of Overseas Development in turn in October 1964. Though the Ministry managed the recruitment and appointment of staff, much of the work was actually devolved to the Crown Agents, and the British Council retained the function of recruiting English language teachers for overseas service.

Initially, the Ministry had four departments in an Overseas Appointments Division to deal with all recruitment and appointment questions. General questions of recruitment and appointment policy were handled by a Recruitment Policy Department, and there were three administrative Departments handling respectively: Education and Medical Appointments (which also handled administrative appointments); Natural Resources Appointments; and Economics and Engineering Appointments.

In 1968 the Recruitment Policy Department was renamed the Appointments Policy Department, with essentially unchanged duties, but the following year the department became the Appointments (General) Department, and questions relating to the provision of personnel functions to recruited staff (including officers appointed under the Overseas Service Aid Scheme and regional technical assistance programmes) passed to a new Personnel Services Executive.

The Education and Medical Appointments Department became the Education and Administrative Appointments Department in 1966, and was merged with the Natural Resources Appointments Department to form the Natural Resources and Medical Appointments Department in 1968. Also in 1968 a a Manpower Planning Unit was created.

In the following year, this work passed on to the two Overseas Services Departments which had begun in the Natural Resources and Personnel Services Division which handled general questions of manpower and terms of service, recruitment policy and technical assistance training in the UK. These departments were renamed Overseas Manpower Departments in 1971, and were merged to form a single department in 1973 when a separate Recruitment Executive was established to handle all recruitments, including those formerly processed by the Economics and Engineering Appointments Department, which had been abolished in 1970.

In 1976 the Overseas Manpower Department became the Overseas Manpower and Consultancies Department, handling in addition policy on consultancy work for developing countries, including making arrangements for the engagement of consultants under aid programmes.

The provision of pensions to staff employed by or temporarily assigned to overseas governments was a difficult policy issue for the overseas development departments, and from 1972 there was a separate Pensions Branch (from 1975 Pensions Department) handling all questions of overseas service pensions.

The Ministry also assumed responsibility from the Department for Technical Co-operation for the Overseas Service Resettlement Bureau, which assisted former members of HM Overseas Civil Service who stayed abroad to serve the governments of developing countries, and other officers who served as short-term contract employees, to find fresh employment on their return to the UK at the end of their period of service. The Bureau was wound up in 1981.