Public institutions to get faster access to best talent under streamlined rules
Changes set out by the government today will make recruiting board members of public institutions—including Ofcom, National Highways, the Civil Aviation Authority and the British Museum—quicker and more efficient, with the aim of securing the best possible talent.
- Changes will ensure the UK’s public boards can swiftly recruit world-class professionals to deliver essential public services.
- Ministers can choose to delegate aspects of recruitment to speed up the process of securing top talent, remaining ultimately responsible for appointments.
- The biggest overhaul of the public appointments system since 2016 aims to close talent gaps caused by bureaucratic delays.
Changes set out by the government today will make recruiting board members of public institutions—including Ofcom, National Highways, the Civil Aviation Authority and the British Museum—quicker and more efficient, with the aim of securing the best possible talent.
The old system, which saw only 13% of hiring campaigns completed within three months in 2023-24, often struggled with excessive delays that deterred exceptional candidates and left critical roles unfilled. This reform tackles that challenge head-on.
In the biggest reform of the public appointments system for nearly a decade, ministers can choose to have less involvement in recruiting board members of public institutions. Instead of needing to be consulted at every intermediate stage, this can now be done by officials, speeding up the recruitment process and minimising the risk of losing high-quality candidates to other sectors.
Ministers will still be required, at a minimum, to agree the role specification and the final decision on each appointment.
Further changes focused on talent attraction include making better use of candidate reserve lists. Under the previous rules, a candidate’s details were only kept on a reserve list for 12 months, but now they will be kept for up to two years, ensuring that quality candidates can be quickly placed into urgent, similar roles without running an entirely new hiring campaign.
In addition, there is a commitment that the list of public appointments made by the Prime Minister, those made by the Crown on the Prime Minister’s recommendation, and those in which the Prime Minister has a strong interest, will be published on GOV.UK, with advertising on the public appointments website to state that this is the case.
The revised code also includes a new principle of public appointments: ‘Public Service’, which recognises that all appointments must be seen as an opportunity to ensure that exceptional people from across the United Kingdom are given the chance to utilise their skills and expertise to drive progress and deliver for the public.
These changes have been made to the Governance Code on Public Appointments, which sets out the process and principles for the appointment of UK and Welsh Government ministers to public sector boards and offices.
The revised code also commits the Cabinet Office to publishing performance information on departments with respect to the time taken to run campaigns.
The Governance Code has not been substantively updated since it was first published in 2016.
There are over 4000 public appointees at present in organisations including the BBC, the Environment Agency, the Arts Council, the Care Quality Commission, the Forestry Commission and the College of Policing.
Public appointments are regulated by the Commissioner for Public Appointments, Sir William Shawcross CVO.
Speaking about the changes, Nick Thomas-Symonds, Minister for the Cabinet Office, said:
Our public bodies work hard to serve the public every day.
It’s high time we shake things up and make it easier to get the best people into these organisations.
The government is breaking down barriers to radically reform the state and deliver a decade of national renewal.