Key facts
- Cabinet secretary Antonia Romeo said Whitehall is "tame and risk-averse" and "reactive, not strategic".
- Romeo said higher bonuses for high-performing senior civil servants were "just the start" of a new approach.
- Romeo is overseeing a review of the civil service's organization due in the spring, alongside a code update.
- A government spokesperson said Andy Burnham backs Romeo's vision for the civil service.
Antonia Romeo, the cabinet secretary, said Whitehall was too "tame, reactive and risk-averse" and set out what she called a "completely new approach" to managing the performance of civil servants, in a lecture at the London School of Economics on November 11, 2026.
Romeo said fundamental reform to improve productivity was essential given the "tight fiscal context", with ministers weighing higher defense spending against the budgets of public services. She said recent changes to increase bonuses for high-performing senior civil servants were "just the start".
"Poor performance drives out good performance and discretionary effort, and we must urgently address that," she said. She said she would strengthen processes and train managers to reward those making the biggest impact and to "take decisive action on poor performance", and would aim to reduce churn, where officials move sideways to get pay rises rather than being rewarded for staying in the same job.
Romeo listed criticisms of the civil service she said must be addressed, including that it was "tame and risk-averse", "reactive, not strategic" and "siloed, not working across boundaries". She is overseeing a review of the organization of the civil service due in the spring, alongside an update to its code, covering departmental structures, AI and "devolution by default".
On AI, she said the technology could make the civil service "more human" by cutting bureaucracy, citing cancer screening and homelessness risk as examples, "under appropriate controls and guardrails". Andy Burnham and his deputy, Louise Haigh, were in the audience. A government spokesperson said afterward that Burnham "backs the cabinet secretary's vision for a civil service that is fit for the future" and is "determined to rewire the state".