Marks & Spencer chair Robert Swannell (pictured) has been made chair of the Advisory Board of the Shareholder Executive. Swannell has been a non-executive director there since January 2014, and will take up the new role in September.

More than two thirds (70%) of civil service managers are coming under pressure to designate 10% of their staff as poorly performing under the new performance management system, according to a survey carried out by Civil Service World.

New figures given to parliament suggest that women, ethnic minorities and disabled staff are winning a smaller proportion of promotions than was the case in 2009. Suzannah Brecknell examines the data to find out more

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has become the first public sector organisation to achieve Gold Status on the industry-judged Disability Standard.

The High Speed 2 company needs to be given greater freedoms from Treasury restrictions so that it can attract the best project managers and construction workers, Alison Munro, chief executive of the project, has told Civil Service World.

Victoria MacCallum (pictured) is the new head of Cabinet Office communications. She has had the job on an interim basis for some time, but it was made permanent in April. Her predecessor in the role, Emily Tofield, has now returned from maternity leave to a new job as cross-government head of media relations.

Departments need more flexibility on pay so that civil service organisations don’t feel the need for “bureaucratic reorganisations” designed to escape pay controls and enable them to recruit skilled staff, the Public Accounts Committee has said.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is to open a second digital academy for its civil servants working in the North of England

The civil service’s “old-fashioned” structures, procedures, budgetary processes and spending controls are constraining the Highways Agency’s ability to focus on the long-term and attract highly-skilled staff, the agency’s chief executive Graham Dalton has told Civil Service World.

The civil service has launched a new range of qualifications for people in the Operations profession.

More than 100 civil servants in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) have got their boots muddy in a series of farm visits aimed at improving their understanding of farming.

The Ministry of Defence’s Defence, Equipment and Support (DE&S) division was this month turned into an arm’s-length body and given an exemption from Treasury salary controls and civil service-wide promotion criteria.