Northcote–Trevelyan Report

The Northcote–Trevelyan Report was a document prepared by Stafford H. Northcote (later to be Chancellor of the Exchequer) and C. E. Trevelyan (then permanent secretary at the Treasury). Published in February 1854, the report catalysed the development of Her Majesty's Civil Service in the United Kingdom.

The principles of the system proposed by Northcote–Trevelyan can be traced to earlier reforms in the Indian Civil Service (ICS).Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, Secretary to the Board of Control, was instrumental in the passing of the Saint Helena Act 1833 which removed the East India Company's trade functions, and established it as an entirely administrative body. He was responsible for establishing the principle of "appointment by generalist competitive examination" into government positions. (Although, as with the Northcote–Trevelyan report subsequently, despite Macaulay's intentions being clear and incorporated into the Act, implementation of those intentions did not immediately follow; it was not until the 1853 that appointment by nomination rather than competition was made universal in the ICS.)

Trevelyan had been a member of the Indian civil service, having been trained at its college at East India Company College near Hertford. He regarded Macaulay highly, and was also married to one of Macaulay's sisters.

Northcote was also influenced by the example of the ICS. He was a friend of William Ewart Gladstone, who was at that time chancellor of the exchequer, and also of Benjamin Jowett, a theologian and tutor at Balliol College, Oxford. Jowett had been one of the commissioners involved in the earlier reform of the ICS, and subsequently wrote a letter which acted as a cover note to the Northcote–Trevelyan report.

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