Sir Bob Kerslake, newly-appointed as head of the civil service, has defined the role as providing “visible leadership” on “performance and capability” issues, and sketched out plans to reform policy making, service delivery, and back office services.

Speaking to CSWimmediately after his appointment yesterday, he said that the job is “pre-eminently one about being a visible leader at a time of great change for the civil service. It’s about understanding the change ahead, and championing what’s good about the civil service while recognising the need to respond to that change.”

It is also, he hinted, about defending the civil service against ill-informed criticism. “The civil service comes with very strong values and huge capability, huge skills and expertise, and I want to make sure that that is understood and recognised,” he said. “None of that means that we don’t have to change, but people need to have the confidence and self-esteem that comes with doing a great job, and I’m keen to act as a champion for that.”

Asked how the civil service will change in future years, Kerslake spoke first of handling the immediate challenges such as those of frozen pay and declining pensions: “A big part of what we have to do is paint that positive future for the civil service.”

Kerslake then picked out three key areas for reform. “It’s important that the policy core is more unified, more flexible in the way it works, and more able to bring together policy and implementation,” he said. Secondly, the civil service’s delivery functions must be “run well, efficiently and strongly, and in a way that responds to users’ needs.” And thirdly, he mentioned reform of support services. The form these back office services take, he said, is less important than the fact “that they work efficiently and well for all departments.”

Sir Bob will begin work in his new role – which he’ll hold alongside his job as permanent secretary of the Department for Communities and Local Government – in January, after the retirement of cabinet secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell. Sir Gus’s work as cabinet secretary is being handed to Number 10 permanent secretary Jeremy Heywood, while Efficiency and Reform Group chief Ian Watmore takes the post of permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office.

Asked exactly how Gus’s roles will be divided, Kerslake acknowledged that “it’s crucial that we’ve got clear alignment, and we’re going to spend quite a bit of time working through the detail.” Heywood will be “principal adviser to the prime minister and cabinet, and ensure that government’s ambitions are taken forward,” he added, and “my role is about performance and capability, ensuring that we’ve got the capacity to respond to what government is seeking”.

Watmore’s work will support Heywood’s role as well as the civil service head’s, Kerslake said, making it clear that he’ll be taking overall charge of the civil service aspects of the Cabinet Office’s ERG reforms. “My job is to oversee the change programme, and clearly the areas that Ian leads on are part of delivering that change programme,” he said.

Although the job title is head of the civil service rather than the ‘home civil service’, Kerslake added, the Foreign Office retains its existing freedoms. In his new job he’ll report both to the PM and to Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude.

Written by Matt Ross, CSW