Public sector leadership in 2025 – a view from our government practice

When leadership works, lives change. It is a straightforward thing to say and a harder thing to deliver, which is why the quality of public sector appointments matters as much as it does, and why the work of getting them right is worth taking seriously.

Over the past nine months, Saxton Bampfylde’s Government Practice has worked on some of the most consequential public sector leadership appointments in the country. The breadth of that work – across departments, agencies, public bodies and devolved administrations, reflects both the demand for senior public sector talent and the trust that government organisations place in us to find it.

Senior public sector appointments — the past nine months

Our recent government executive search work has spanned some of the most significant leadership roles in British public life:

Building the leadership pipeline public service needs

The appointments we make matter not just individually but collectively. What the pipeline looks like – who gets appointed, where they come from, what perspectives they bring, shapes public sector leadership for years. These are the figures from our government practice appointments over the period:

These figures reflect the work of building diverse candidate pools deliberately, not as an afterthought. Through our partnerships with EPOC and Onboard, and through the REACH programme we co-founded with the Civil Service, supporting colleagues with disabilities to reach executive-level roles, we are working to make public sector leadership more representative in practice, not just in principle.

 

 

Demand for senior public sector leadership search has never been greater, and the complexity of the work has grown with it. The organisations commissioning these appointments are navigating significant change, in policy priorities, in public expectations, in the relationship between government and the wider economy. The leaders they appoint will shape how that plays out.

What we have found, consistently, is that the best candidates for government roles are not always found by looking within government alone. The cross-sector perspective, leaders who understand regulated industries, complex public bodies, commercial environments under scrutiny, is increasingly what departments and agencies are looking for. That is where we tend to find the most interesting conversations.

If you are working on a senior appointment in government or the wider public sector and would like to discuss how we approach it, I would be glad to hear from you.

— Sophie Tredinnick, Head of Government and Public Sector Practice