Whitehall is too ‘tame, reactive and risk-averse’, says UK’s top civil servant

Antonia Romeo pledges to ‘rewire’ civil service by incentivising and rewarding top performers

Whitehall is too “tame, reactive and risk-averse”, the cabinet secretary has said, as she set out a “completely new approach” to managing the performance of civil servants.

With Andy Burnham and his deputy, Louise Haigh, in the audience, the UK’s most senior civil servant, Antonia Romeo, gave a lecture saying she would bring radical change to Whitehall as it deals with uncertainty caused by AI and global political tensions.