Over the decades, local government has seen a number of trends in recruitment for chief executives. Solicitors were in demand in the 1960s and 70s. More recently, senior finance officers, regeneration experts and social services specialists have all had their day. In the past few years, senior civil servants have become increasingly desirable candidates for council chief exec roles – which can come with salaries in excess of £200,000 a year at a large metropolitan borough or county.
According to Julie Towers and Dawar Hashmi at Penna Executive Recruitment, moves from local authority executive director to chief exec still make up “the backbone” of appointments to council top jobs. However, they say there is clearly now a “willingness to look outside the classic pipeline” when the context is right.
Graeme McDonald, managing director of the Society of Local Government Chief Executives and Senior Managers (Solace), says civil servants have also become more interested in opportunities in local government. “Since Covid, there’s a little bit more understanding of what the role of local authorities is, and that they can be levers of change,” he says. McDonald also thinks devolution is making a difference, contributing to a general sense that local government can be a “positive move”.
CSW talked to five former senior civil servants who’ve been appointed as council chief execs about why they made the switch and the differences they’ve encountered. Common themes include a desire to shape on-the-ground impacts after working at the Whitehall end of the policy process, markedly different political demands in local government and dealing with far greater transparency.
Kate Josephs became chief executive of Sheffield City Council in 2021. She describes the move as “a real calling home to South Yorkshire. The thing that massively attracted me is that in a local authority, you simply have to be focused on the communities and people that make up that place. The difference and the messiness that characterises a place, the strengths, the opportunities, the challenges, are specific to that place.”
Kate Josephs, chief executive of Sheffield City Council
Kate Josephs has been chief executive of Sheffield City Council since 2021. Her last job in government was director general in the Cabinet Office Covid-19 Taskforce. Earlier roles included deputy director in the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department for Education, the Treasury and the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit. She also worked for the US Federal Government during the Obama administration.
“When I joined the civil service, I felt like working at national level would be the way I could make the biggest impact on kids growing up in the type of community I grew up in," Josephs says. "I felt really proud of what I’d done in the civil service. But after 20 years, I felt like I hadn’t fully made the difference I hoped to have in the place I’m from. There’s just so much more impact you can have in local places.”
She says that a real, deep understanding of what makes places different is “really critical” to delivering impact and change on the ground. I live in the city, I walk past the consequences of the decisions I am part of, and in some cases making on a statutory basis, every single day. I find that incredibly humbling and also motivating. Ultimately, you’re supporting the politicians, because they’re the decision-makers. But there’s something about feeling a sense of connection.”
Sophie Broadfield, chief executive at Bath and North East Somerset Council, says that after working on policies she never got to see through to fruition in central government, she relishes the focus on delivery in her current role. “It’s a smaller pond, my patch here, but I have a much bigger influence,” she says. “I’m drawing together all these different threads from central government and trying to make sense of them in a place in a way that makes a difference to people’s lives. It feels much more direct and tangible than anything I did in central government.”
Sophie Broadfield, chief executive at Bath and North East Somerset Council
Sophie Broadfield became chief executive at Bath and North East Somerset Council in January. She joined the authority as director of sustainable communities in 2021. She previously held deputy director roles at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Earlier in her career she was head of devolution and public service reform at the Treasury.
“In the civil service, you’re often working things up to the point of announcement," Broadfield says. "You’re designing something that’s potentially really impactful and covers the whole country but you don’t actually see it through.”
Ed Whiting, chief executive at Leeds City Council, adds: “You are often able to take a longer-term perspective in local government, looking at what will best benefit your place over a number of years and how you can best put together the potential of the private and public sectors to contribute to the growth and development of your place rather than focus on one policy alone.”
Politically, a local authority chief executive will need to work most closely with their council leader or elected mayor. But all the chief execs CSW spoke to stressed that their job requires them to work on behalf of every councillor, regardless of whether they are part of the ruling group. Chief execs can also find themselves having to deal with disputes between councillors. Local MPs are also likely to keep in close touch, and then there are devolved government structures, such as mayoral combined authorities.
Ed Whiting, chief executive at Leeds City Council
Ed Whiting has been chief executive at Leeds City Council since January 2025. Before that, he was director of the Cities and Local Growth Unit, which operates jointly between the Department for Business and Trade and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. He has also worked at the Treasury and No.10, where he was deputy principal private secretary to David Cameron. Between 2016 and 2022, he worked at the Wellcome Trust.
“I’ve worked with local authorities at a number of points in my career, and have always been taken with the ‘place’ focus and the sense of local service," Whiting says. "So when the chance came up to take a leadership role in the place where I grew up, it felt like the right step.”
Towers and Hashmi at Penna say dealing with the necessities of local politics is “probably the biggest shift” for a civil servant. “In central government, the political relationship can be intense, but it is structured and mediated through formal roles,” they say. “In local government, it is constant and personal.”
Laurence Rockey, chief executive at East Lothian Council, agrees that local government’s political landscape is complicated to navigate, compared with the relatively straightforward lines of ministerial command in the civil service. “You’ve got a nuanced role that requires delicate footwork to make sure you’re delivering for the administration, who are held to account for delivery, but also supporting all councillors,” he says. “You’ve got to be a straight shooter and give honest advice consistently. That’s probably one of the hardest bits of the job, actually.”
Laurence Rockey, chief executive of East Lothian Council
Laurence Rockey has been chief executive of East Lothian Council since April 2025. He was previously director of the Scotland Office. Earlier in his career, Rockey held senior posts in the Cabinet Office and the Department for Communities and Local Government – including deputy director of the Cities and Local Growth Unit. His first job in local government was at City of Edinburgh Council, where he was head of strategy from 2017 to 2020.
“I was advising local authorities on city deals, grant deals, devolution from Cornwall to Aberdeen, and I really enjoyed working in the place," Rockey says. "I was frustrated by central government’s lack of ability to work effectively with local places. Rather than advising local government, there was an opportunity to walk the walk myself.”
Josephs notes that local politics has a “much more diverse range of people” than national politics. She says that while councillors are often highly focused on “hyperlocal” issues, few “only care about one thing. In a city like Sheffield, you’re constantly rubbing up against interactions – how our work on housing is integral to our work on health and employment. How our work on transport is a fundamental piece of the jigsaw when it relates to tackling poverty or driving up opportunity.”
Josephs does regular half-day “ward walks” with councillors representing particular electoral divisions. They are an opportunity for problems to be raised and for introductions to community groups to be made. “I find that incredibly informative,” she says. “It’s how we get a sense of what the impact is of the policy or the strategy that you might put into a whole organisation.”
Broadfield at Bath and North East Somerset describes markedly different political relationships compared with those she experienced in the civil service. “I have got multiple local politicians WhatsApping me on a regular basis,” she says. “It’s much more live and immediate than waiting weeks to have a meeting with the minister and giving a submission in central government.”
Leeds City Council’s Whiting says that while maintaining relationships with MPs and regional government “can look like an extra level of complexity”, the reality is different. He says working with counterparts at West Yorkshire Combined Authority has proved to be “a valuable source of peer support and advice”. The 10 MPs who cover Leeds are often “a useful bridge” between local issues and the national policy and delivery conversation, he says.
Another major difference between civil service and local government life is the visibility of council officers and their advice to decision-makers – through either the routine publication of papers supporting council meetings or the Freedom of Information Act. Robert Pollock, chief executive at Cambridge City Council, says civil servants don’t have to stand behind their advice in public and be accountable for it in the way that local government officers do.
“It’s striking that you even get civil servants in MHCLG that aren’t aware that when we write stuff down, because they’ve asked us to do something, it will often go to a political meeting to be debated, and it will get published and anyone can read it,” he says. “I’m certainly a better policymaker for having to put my name to stuff which then gets published and you then have to deliver. You have to be pretty clear and accountable for what you say and what you’re recommending.”
Robert Pollock, chief executive of Cambridge City Council
Robert Pollock has been chief executive of Cambridge City Council since April 2021. He was a senior civil servant at the Treasury, spending three years as director of the Public Service Transformation Network. Earlier in his civil service career, he was a policy adviser on a range of issues and worked at the United Nations in New York. He has also been a director at non-profit organisation Social Finance.
“I started off my career doing very international stuff," Pollock says. "Working at the local level seemed foreign to me. But once I got into it, I realised the immediacy of the impact was potentially more rewarding, because you could see things through more quickly.”
While accountability and visibility are theoretically a good thing, Solace’s McDonald notes that such openness doesn’t come without a downside. He says being a council chief exec can be “quite an exposed place”. A high profile in the area where you live and work can just mean residents raising issues if they see a chief exec in the supermarket. But local government officials can also find themselves more open to press and social media scrutiny than most civil servants, and sometimes it’s highly problematic.
McDonald says serious cases of abuse have impacted on senior officials’ family lives and forced them to move their children to different schools. “If there are things that are going to put people off, that will be one of them,” he says.
Typically, council chief execs are responsible for far more staff than they ever were in the civil service. Many will be professionals such as social workers, town planners, environmental health specialists and accountants – rather than “generalists”, all guided by statutory requirements. Nevertheless, CSW’s chief execs all felt that their civil service experience was good preparation for local government leadership.
Bath and North East Somerset’s Broadfield says she felt a degree of imposter syndrome when she first made the leap, because adverts for senior local government jobs referenced professional qualifications from within the sector. “When I was actually in the job, I did find that the skills I’d learnt as a member of the policy profession in the civil service were very valid and the leadership and management skills I’d learned from being on courses with the civil service absolutely apply,” she says.
Sheffield’s Josephs adds that having people in local government who understand what makes Whitehall tick, are not “overawed by the unspoken ways of working” and who can land a point in discussions with civil servants or ministers is helpful. “That means we can advocate better,” she says.
Broadfield says she was surprised at how compliant council officers can be in the face of central government demands, and how staff don’t feel empowered to influence policy. “If policy is badly made or has unintended consequences, we should engage with that and talk to the civil service,” she says. “We should be a bit more confident.”
Councils typically encounter far lower levels of staff churn than government departments. While CSW’s chief execs view the resulting stability, expertise and community connection positively, they also remark that a lack of movement makes it hard to promote talent.
CSW asks what the civil service can teach local government.
Sheffield’s Josephs highlights data use and evidence-based policymaking, which she describes as “less well resourced” at the local level. Cambridge’s Pollock adds: “Civil servants are naturally good at understanding complex policy landscapes. And they’re good at communications and they’re strategic. That’s something local government can learn about.” Broadfield says local government has lessons to learn from the civil service on leadership training – particularly for directors and future directors. She says development is too focused on professions in councils, which makes sense for professional skills but not for leadership. “The civil service does it much, much better in terms of identifying talent, training up that talent and spreading the talent around,” she says.
So, what can local government teach Whitehall?
“I think we could teach civil servants about how to engage and sit with the complexity and messiness that is what happens when you’re working with people and communities,” Sheffield’s Josephs says. East Lothian’s Rockey says that if civil servants had more experience with the practicalities of delivery – like the financial considerations that affect local government – they would do better policymaking. He cites excessive focus on the creation of low-value funds to further policy goals as one problem area.
CSW’s chief execs are broadly supportive of more secondments between central government and local government. Broadfield says civil service programmes such as the Senior Leadership Scheme and the Future Leaders Scheme should be open to the wider public sector. Rockey adds that a graduate scheme covering both central government and local government would be helpful. “I don’t know why people go to Jobcentres as fast streamers but not to local authorities,” he says. “More cross-pollination for sure would make a big difference.”
Penna’s Towers and Hashmi say the calibre of civil servants applying for local government leadership roles is high, due in part to their structured training and development support. Other factors that make for a “credible” civil service candidate are management of high-stakes politics and fluency with central government funding and crisis management. “Those that combine this with a passion to move into local government, shape place and work closely with communities are now more regularly making longlists and shortlists,” they say.