In September 2023 I submitted an application for a public appointment. Nothing that exciting; it was a non-executive role on the board of a mid-sized quango.
In December 2023 I had an interview for the role.
On 30 August 2024 - nearly a full year after applying - I received a letter saying I had not been successful1.
This isn’t a post about whether or not I should have got the job. This is a post about why the process is too damn long2, why this matters - and how we could improve it.
Firstly, to be clear, this isn’t exceptional. Yes, I’m sure mine got delayed a little by the election - but even if we take from application to the election being called, that is close to 9 months. In Government, as both a civil servant and a SpAd, I almost never saw an appointment take under 6 months, 6-9 months was standard, and 9-12 not uncommon.
The process is too damn long.
As a SpAd, something I did regularly was speak to people, often very senior, who had applied for these roles - and who we badly wanted to not drop out - to reassure them that yes, the process was still ongoing, no the fact that they hadn’t heard anything for four months shouldn’t be taken as a bad sign, and no, I couldn’t tell them when they’d hear, but if they were patient for another month…or two…or three then the process would eventually conclude.
The process is too damn long.
How do public appointments work?
There are thousands of public appointments. These range from the hugely influential - Chair of Ofcom, His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Schools - to non-executive board level positions on arm’s-length bodies you’ve never heard of.
Most departments have a central team who looks after these. They’ll liaise with the sponsor team for the relevant arm’s length body who will then run the application process itself, liaising with Ministers, SpAds and others.
Formally, how the process works is that individuals apply, civil servants do an initial sift, and then the panel - typically comprised of a senior civil servant, the chair of the relevant body and an independent member, though this can vary - first assess the applications and then interview them. They score these, and put all the applications that are above the line3 through to Ministers4. Ministers will usually - though not always - want to meet those on the final list, and will then make their choice. The full process is set out here.
No. 10 has to be consulted at multiple points in the process and, in many No. 10 operations, there has been a specific individual or team (usually including at least one SpAd and sometimes civil servants also) who takes an interest in public appointments. For many appointments, No. 10 must explicitly sign off moving from one stage to the next, as well as the final appointment.
As you can see, the process is too damn long.
Why is the process so damn long?
If you just look at the process above, you can see that with the number of processes, there is plenty of room for delay. Multiple stages, officials, Ministers and No. 10 being sighted or needing to give approval at each stage, plenty of room for delay.
A public appointment is rarely the most urgent thing on anyone’s plate. Officials may well put it behind an urgent submission - or briefing a Minister for a Parliamentary debate. In private office, it’s often something that can wait a few days if the Minister’s box is full. Ministers aren’t usually chasing for it. And No. 10, which deals with so much, can often take it’s time to process these.
Add to that that you need to give notice for senior people to come in for an interview (often twice). If No. 10 have some fundamental internal disagreements about a candidate - or a disagreement between a Department and No. 10 - that can slow the whole process down for weeks while this gets resolved. Plus if the lead official is on holiday at a key moment, that may add a couple of weeks’ delay right there.
Plus the fact that it’s normalised that these processes take 9 months or so, so everyone accepts this.
But the fact remains that no private sector organisation - and plenty of public sector ones - would never tolerate something like this5.
The process is too damn long.
Does it matter that the process is so damn long?
Yes, it does - and not just because too much official time - paid for by the taxpayer - is spent on this.
It matters because it means we don’t get as good people as we could in those jobs. For someone who’s not very senior, like me, we’ll put ourselves through the process. But for some of these roles, we are looking for very senior people indeed. Top business leaders or charity executives, vice-chancellors of universities and so forth.
Fortunately, some senior people are willing to put themselves through the process. But plenty of others decide the game just isn’t worth the candle. Any civil servant or SpAd who has spent time encouraging people to put in applications6 can confirm that the length and hassle of the process can be a major blocker.
Other times, maybe someone does apply but then they pull out - because the process has taken so long that they’ve already got other roles. Or the situation changes: most dramatically, perhaps, with a change of Government7 - but perhaps just with a change of Minister, which happens frequently, who has a very different conception of the skills needed or priorities for the role. And when that happens, when we waste very senior people’s time, we lose valuable good will and mean they’re less likely to want to do it again.
There are other ways, too, that the process works against getting the best people. When there are people who have leading roles in public life - they’re the head of a FTSE250 company, perhaps, or the vice-chancellor of a university - is it really sensible to be judging them against what they write on a two page piece of A4, rather than their very public record of delivery (or non-delivery)? I’ve seen, bizarrely, vice-chancellors rejected for roles in the sector because they were judged by the assessing panel ‘not to be above the line’ solely on the basis of their application form. Of course, we want fair, open and merit-based competition - but surely that means judging people by all the information available, not by how well they can fill in a form.
Similarly, while sometimes these competitions are genuinely open8, sometimes Ministers do have a particular candidate, or set of potential candidates in mind. This doesn’t mean they’re guaranteed it - Ministers may still want to see who else might apply - but it does mean they have a strong chance. Almost always, these are people already in public life, with a record of delivery in the public domain that can be scrutinised and assessed. Again, do such people, really need to start from the beginning, filling in forms?
How can we make the process less damn long?
There are a number of ways - some simple, and others more significant.
To start with the simple:
The process should be systematically reviewed to cut out duplication and streamline the process.
For all but the most senior roles, No. 10 should be involved less. A final sign-off at the end - and perhaps a conversation at the very beginning on who to encourage to apply - is more appropriate than checking each stage (one should simply trust Secretaries of States, Ministers and their SpAds to do this properly).
Clear expectations should be placed - and enforced at each stage: how long does a policy team take to turn around a submission; how rapidly will assessing take place; how quickly will a submission go in the box.
Change the expectation of how long these processes last, from 6 - 9 months to 3 - 6 months.
As with all such things, such changes would need to be initiated, driven and enforced from very senior level within a department to have an effect.
The more radical ones would be more fundamentally transformative - but in my view would get us better people without compromising merit-based competition.
Where individuals already in public life apply for roles, they should be judged on the full basis of information readily in the public eye, not just on a 2 page application form. We should not be assessing very senior individuals - who may not have applied for a role for many years - on how well they can write bureaucratese.
Where an individual is already in public life, and based on this record both Ministers and the appointment panel agree that they are clearly above the minimum standards for the role, it should be possible to fast-track that individual straight to the interview stage. If a Minister wished to fast track an individual who the appointments panel did not agree was suitable, they would be required to make this public - as is the case now when they appoint someone the panel does not think is suitable.
In exceptional circumstances, with the agreement of the Permanent Secretary, it should be possibly to skip the entire appointments process and simply have the Minister interview preferred candidates who are considered appointable. This should be a minimum of three individuals (to provide choice) and the Permanent Secretary would need to agree that the individuals were appointable, based on their public record. This method would be used rarely - there is value in an open process - but could be used when there is a pressing need to fill a role quickly, and/or where it is clear Ministers will only consider appointing from a small number of known individuals.
Some may balk at these last proposals. But the reality is that getting the right people in public appointments matters a lot for how well the country functions: some of these individuals have extensive policy functions and oversee the disbursement of billions of pounds of public money. In terms of acceptability, in practice, if a Minister appoints an unsuitable figure, a donor or crony, there is rightly an outcry even if 'the process' has been followed; similarly, if a clearly suitable figure is appointed without process - such as recently, when Labour appointed the widely respected Sir Kevan Collins as a NED to the DfE board - then very few people object. The reforms above would strike a better balance between flexibility, speed and assurance than the current system.
Public appointments taking too damn long is one of those things that rarely seems important enough for someone to take the trouble to fix - and yet is part of the gunk in the wheels that degrades our whole system of government.
It wouldn't be hard for it to be better. And making public appointments not take so damn long would lead do better government - whichever party is in power.
I imagine that, unsurprisingly, the new Labour Government didn’t want to appoint an ex Tory SpAd. This is entirely reasonable and proper: these are Ministerial appointments, not civil service roles, and it’s right that the Government of the day ensures the people who are appointed align with its views and priorities.
With apologies to Georgism.
Typically about 2 - 6. Sometimes just 1, but Ministers tend not to like this.
Ministers can choose to select someone not declared above the line, but they have to make this public and, in practice, almost never do this.
Yes, a big private sector company might take a long time to choose its CEO. But this time would be used in an extensive search process, or detailed exploration of the leading candidates with the Board, not with forms stuck in part of the organisation and senior people applying left hearing nothing for months on end.
This is a formal part of the process and doesn’t suggest someone is guaranteed the job. Civil servants will usually send up a list of people they think could be encouraged to apply; Ministers and SpAds typically add to it - and then all those people are contacted and asked if they would be interested in applying.
In my case, I wouldn’t have bothered applying under a Labour Government.
When, as a civil servant, I worked to set up the Teaching Excellence Framework, no-one - civil servant or Minister - had any strong idea who we wanted as chair; it was very much a case of seeing who applied - and fortunately, Chris Husbands, who was excellent, did!