Civil service leaders must continue to invest in developing the careers of talented civil servants despite budget pressures, the retiring Home Office permanent secretary Sir David Normington has said.

Speaking in an interviewwith Civil Service World, Normington – who will take up a new post as the first Civil Service Commissioner and Commissioner for Public Appointments next year, said: “Getting the best people, appointed on merit, to the top of the civil service and to quangos is the way you make public services better.”

He said there has been much work to improve talent management and leadership development under cabinet secretary Gus O’Donnell, including encouraging departments to improve talent management and a “suite of programmes put in place for the development of our senior leaders by the Cabinet Office”.

“What I think the civil service has to watch is that in a time of austerity it doesn’t cut back on that too much,” he said. “There will be some reductions, but the worst thing you can do in a time of austerity is to cut back on your talent development, because that will catch up with you in three or four years’ time, when you say: ‘I wonder why we haven’t got any talent?’ The answer will be that you cut all those programmes.”

Normington emphasised the importance of broadening the use of open competitions – whether internally or including external candidates – to ensure “people have a chance to put their hand up and say: I’m suitable for that job”.

He will retire from the Home Office this month, and take up the posts of First Civil Service Commissioner and Commissioner for Public Appointments from April. In these roles, he will be responsible for overseeing recruitment to the civil service and public bodies, chairing recruitment panels for the top three grades in the civil service, and ensuring the Civil Service Code is upheld.

To read the full interview click here.

Written by Civil Service World