CCS governance and leadership

1.12  CCS, an executive agency of the Cabinet and trading fund, is managed by a chief executive, who reports to the Cabinet Office permanent secretary and is overseen by a board. When CCS was launched the government appointed its chief procurement officer to the role of CCS board chair.4  However, before the end of CCS's first year of operation, the government had decided this was not the best governance arrangement and in late 2014 it appointed a new chair.

1.13  The government has also changed the functions that report to the CCS chief executive. When CCS was launched all functions reported to the CCS chief executive, but by the middle of 2015 the Cabinet Office decided that three functions would report to the Cabinet Office government chief commercial officer on a day-to-day basis. These functions remain part of CCS (Figure 5). This report focuses on the buying of common goods and services. However, we discuss some of the weaknesses of these governance arrangements in Part Three.

Three functions within CCS report to the government's chief commercial officer

  Formal accountability and reporting

  Informal management accountability and reporting

1.14 In addition to these governance changes, CCS has had a high turnover of senior managers. Since April 2014, four of the 11 original board and senior management team remain unchanged; some roles have had multiple incumbents. While many of these changes may have been necessary and improved CCS's overall capability, this high turnover in leadership has made it difficult for CCS to maintain a clear and consistent strategic direction. Since summer 2016, CCS has appointed four senior managers with significant operational experience to its senior management team.

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4  In September 2014 the role of chief procurement officer was replaced by a newly created role called the government chief commercial officer. However, the former chief procurement officer became the new chief commercial officer.