WITH back-to-back multiple rotations of prime ministers and other ministers that the UK saw last year, it is fair to say that 2022 was an exceptionally turbulent year.
However, for public sector professional Ravi Chand CBE, whose role as Director at Cabinet Office made him one of the main facilitators of these changes, it was an overall successful year.
“It was a really challenging time for me to deliver the pace of growth,” Chand told GG2 Power list 2023.
“Despite whatever ministers coming in, there are government programmes that are running and I am the one who is held accountable. I am the one that goes before a Government Select Committee and gets grilled about their performance so it's really important for me to keep them on,” he said.
Chand is also the Director of Places for Growth and Beyond at the Cabinet Office and is in the process of creating of what he described as “UK Government for the whole UK and not just for London”.
“So actually, having most senior policymakers in London results in (sometimes) poor advice to businesses, because they don't have an understanding of what the challenges are in other areas like Glasgow, Edinburgh, Belfast, Cardiffand other big cities. So, we have been trying to relocate key roles and create senior pipelines in these cities.
“We are actually replicating the elements of Whitehall in different parts of country. So,for Cabinet Office, we now have a second headquarters in Glasgow; the Treasury has moved in create a new economic campus in Darlington, actually led by Rishi Sunak himself, because that was his baby,” informed Chand.
Chand had quite a busy year amid fast-paced political developments and multiple rounds of change inleadership at No10 and other levels of the government.
“It has been a fantastic experience. I travel quite a bit across the country to different cities and spend time meeting with key players and partners and also in and out of London to meet ministers,” he said.
Chand has been working closely with prime minister Rishi Sunak, who is “really interested in knowing more what we are doing in the programme”.
“We have now got quite a mix of the ministers to be honest. Politically, it's an interesting time,” he noted.
Chand started his career from Bedfordshire Police as a officer. After a decade-long stunt, he diverged into consulting and set up a financial service business before being “literally headhunted” back into government services.
He joined Home Office in 2006 and was made HR Director Workforce Management at Her Majestys Revenue and Customs (HMRC) in 2014. “
“I have a particular skill set and passion for what I do and I can play that universally in different organisations.
In HMRC, Chand overlooked one of the biggest transformation programmes of moving tax authority from a “traditional paper based, slow organization to a fast-moving online self-service”.
However, it is his time spent as a frontline police officer that has impacted him the most.
“I think policing has taught me resilience, leadership and ability to stay calm in the face of crisis,” he concluded.
