What was your highlight of 2025?
Professionally there have been so many highlights across all teams in the department; I am always in awe of the breadth of what the Cabinet Office does. From delivering unique and inspiring events like the US State Banquet and visit, right through to fantastic efficiency and reform efforts, such as the increases in counter fraud savings from AI – our diversity and systems leadership is a huge strength and I am incredibly proud of how we consistently deliver challenging system-wide projects and policies. My personal highlight was Civil Service Live – I love getting out and about hearing about our work, and feeling the energy and positivity of the whole civil service coming together to learn and develop. Another personal highlight this year was moving house smoothly with minimal fuss and stress!
What was the hardest part of being a leader in 2025?
We are changing the state, changing the civil service and changing the Cabinet Office – it is what continuous improvement, adaptation and agility looks like in the modern world. We have adopted AI at scale, and made big changes to our structures and ways of working. Leading teams through constant change, whilst delivering our very best inevitably brings highs and lows – my leadership team and staff have been resilient and positive throughout but it would be unrealistic for me to say it hasn’t at times been hard. I am confident that the benefits and rewards will outweigh the challenges and the end state vision for change, being closer to citizens, creating a faster and better way of working, and adopting tech at scale, will all set us on a positive path in 2026.
What are the main challenges facing your department in the coming year?
Prioritisation and focus is our number one challenge – we do a huge amount of work across a very broad waterfront – and we are rightsizing our workload to make even more impact with the resources and brilliant skills and experience we have. Everything we do has a link to other bodies, partners and government departments, so doing this in a system and channeling our combined energy to really shift the impact on the biggest priorities for the government is key.
Which celebrity or historical figure would you choose to turn on the Christmas lights in your town – and why?
Purely selfishly – I loved the Celebrity Traitors – my new favourite namesake Cat Burns would be a huge hit at our village Carol-oke.
Read all the entries to this year's perm secs round up here