Who will be the next head of the UK civil service?

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Simon Case’s resignation as Britain’s top civil servant after four tumultuous years in the job creates a vacancy at the apex of Sir Keir Starmer’s new Labour administration.

His successor, who is expected to start work in early 2025, will lead 500,000 civil servants and act as the principal policy adviser to the prime minister and cabinet.

On a salary of £200,000 a year, the new cabinet secretary will play a key role in implementing Starmer’s agenda, following a shaky start for the new government and reports of rifts at the centre of power.

The candidates will be interviewed by a panel chaired by Baroness Gisela Stuart. Dame Sharon White, a former Treasury official and ex-chair of John Lewis, is also on the panel and will therefore not be a candidate. The final decision will be made by Starmer.

Olly Robbins

Best known as the civil servant charged by former premier Theresa May with the gruelling task of negotiating the UK’s Brexit deal, Sir Olly Robbins is a former Treasury and national security official.

He left the civil service in 2019 after Boris Johnson ditched May’s deal in favour of a “hard Brexit”. Robbins went on to work for Goldman Sachs and the consultancy Hakluyt, where he is a partner.

Robbins is widely seen as the preferred choice of Sue Gray, Starmer’s chief of staff. The two first met when Robbins was Tony Blair’s principal private secretary from 2006-07 and Gray was investigating the “cash for honours” scandal.

Melanie Dawes

The head of the media watchdog Ofcom, Dame Melanie Dawes is a highly regarded former Treasury official and, unlike Robbins, she has run a large Whitehall department: housing and local government.

She has said she is happy in her current job and has plenty more to do at the regulator. Dawes is currently on a salary of £324,000 a year, according to the latest figures, so moving to the Cabinet Office would involve a pay cut.

But she is seen as a good communicator, a popular colleague and was also formerly the civil service “champion” for diversity issues.

Tamara Finkelstein

Permanent secretary at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Finkelstein is seen by colleagues as utterly discreet, low profile and focused on delivery.

After the recent reports of tensions and splits in Number 10, Finkelstein might appeal to Starmer as someone who would quietly get on with the job of cabinet secretary.

Sister of the Tory peer and journalist Lord Daniel Finkelstein, she is a Treasury veteran who worked closely with Gordon Brown during his time as chancellor from 1997.

Antonia Romeo

Permanent secretary at the Ministry of Justice since 2021, Dame Antonia Romeo was being lined up by ex-premier Liz Truss to head the Treasury in October 2022, before market chaos persuaded her to choose finance ministry veteran James Bowler instead.

Romeo, former permanent secretary at the Department for International Trade, has had to manage the crisis in Britain’s prisons. Unlike most civil servants, she has a high media profile.

Like Case, Romeo was not schooled in the Treasury, a department that has traditionally been the stamping ground of future cabinet secretaries, but has a solid record in domestic and international policy.

Sarah Healey

Permanent secretary at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Healey is viewed by colleagues as charismatic, personable and down to earth: a more modern style of mandarin.

She was previously the top official at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, and has worked in the Cabinet Office.

Labour insiders are not convinced she would be the recommendation of Gray, who served as second-in-command to Healey in her current role. The pair did not gel easily, according to colleagues.

Minouche Shafik

Possessor of a glittering CV, spanning senior jobs at institutions including the World Bank, Bank of England, Department for International Trade and London School of Economics, Baroness Minouche Shafik is increasingly talked about in civil service circles as a potential candidate.

In August, she resigned from her most recent role as president of Columbia University in New York, following months of criticism over her handling of student protests after the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

Appointed to the House of Lords as a life peer in 2020, she would be expected to continue with her leave of absence from the upper house in the event she applied for and was chosen for the top civil service job.