Speaking in an interview alongside new cabinet secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood, Kerslake explained that “very few of the big changes that we need to undergo across the civil service – things around skills, new approaches to policy – can be done by individual departments alone. They require cross-civil service corporate leadership.”
Kerslake has, he said, been “looking at the current arrangements for corporate leadership of the civil service, to see whether they need to be strengthened and changed in order to match the tasks we have ahead.” As a result, the Civil Service Steering Board – established in 2007 to improve strategic leadership in the civil service – will be replaced by a Civil Service Board “with a stronger collective, corporate leadership role”.
The new board will “oversee the [civil service] change programme, and ensure that we’re delivering the priorities of the government and of ministers in the reform agenda,” Kerslake said. He will chair the board, which will comprise the cabinet secretary and a group of permanent secretaries.
Asked for details, a Cabinet Office spokesman explained that “the head of the civil service and cabinet secretary have been considering how best to refresh civil service governance.
“They feel the civil service needs a better corporate governance model, to support delivery of a shared agenda focused on the right issues. Getting the corporate leadership approach and supporting governance framework right will enable permanent secretaries to take effective, collective decisions in the right forum, with the right information in front of them, through a transparent corporate structure that makes the best use of their valuable time.”
The new board will, he said, “provide strategic leadership for the civil service, reaching a collective view on key issues affecting the civil service, providing collective advice to ministers, and where appropriate taking decisions on behalf of the service.” Its main roles will be “providing corporate leadership of the civil service, and delivering an agenda for change based on a small number of ‘priorities for action’ by closely engaging with the minister for the Cabinet Office and the government’s non-executives.” A secretariat will be established in the Cabinet Office to support the board’s work.
In the interview, Heywood and Kerslake also set out plans for a civil service reform white paper, emphasised civil servants’ duty to ensure that policies are workable, and detailed the changes underway in policymaking.
Read the full interview with Kerslake and Heywood