Prospect's assessment of how the civil service reform plan is doing was launched today at the union's civil service sector conference in Liverpool and is the subject of the blog by the union's director of communications and research.

In it, Ferns argues: "Standards should be at the heart of any reform agenda – for the delivery of professional public services; ethics and accountability; and fair employment.

"Instead the reform plan seems to have become a vehicle for introducing counter-productive job losses and attacks on the terms and conditions of the employees left behind, with a devastating knock-on effect on services."

Download Prospect's full assessment; and read Ferns’s blog on the Guardian Public Leaders' Network website.

Prospect members are encouraged to sign up to the newspaper's public leaders' network.