Dame Sarah Healey has been named the next permanent secretary at the Department for Work and Pensions and will move into the post in August, replacing Sir Peter Schofield. The appointment gives the department a new top official just as it prepares to push ahead with welfare reform, pensions changes and efforts to improve job opportunities for young people.
Readers are searching for the change now because the handover is set for August, not later in the year, and because Healey is moving from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government into one of Whitehall’s most politically sensitive departments. Schofield has held the role since 2018 and will leave after 35 years in the civil service, closing a long run at the department as ministers look for continuity at the centre of the welfare system.
Pat McFadden, the work and pensions secretary, said he was delighted to welcome Healey and described her as having an outstanding record across government. He said that experience was needed as the department works to support people to realise their potential at every stage of life, while improving services through modern, connected and personalised systems. He also paid tribute to Schofield for what he called extraordinary commitment to public service over 35 years.
Healey brings a wide civil service background to the job. She has worked across government departments since 2001, beginning in Tony Blair’s No. 10 strategy unit fresh out of university. She later served at the Department for Education as a director of education funding and strategy, and was a senior civil servant there during the tail end of the Conservative government’s Building Schools for the Future programme, half of which was procured under the controversial private finance initiative. She then became a key figure in the Cabinet Office, overseeing the development of economic and domestic policy after Brexit negotiations.
Before her move to MHCLG, Healey spent four years as permanent secretary at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, where she oversaw work including the Online Safety Act and the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games. Last year she was awarded a damehood for her public service. That record is likely to matter in a department that now has to steer one of the government’s most exposed reform agendas.
Yet the handover also leaves a question hanging over the summer: how Healey will balance a fresh arrival with a brief adjustment period in a department that moves millions of lives. She said she was delighted by the appointment, said DWP touches millions of lives and called its reform agenda ambitious. She also said she was leaving MHCLG with great pride in what had been accomplished there over the last three years. The transition in August will put that experience to the test immediately.
