Introduction

Administering policy into effect is considered to be less important than its formulation by the senior civil service (SCS) both in the core executive and functional departments and can be of less interest to some ministers. The extent to which governments place emphasis on the implementation of policy varies, with the Thatcher and Blair governments regarded as most active in this approach (Urban et al 2024). Governments also use different strategies to frame policies at the point of implementation, so the Coalition government (2010– 15) wanted to reduce public delivery and did this directly through Osborne's austerity programme that removed funding (Gamble 2015).

There have been discussions and reviews about the effectiveness of the civil service in administering policy during most governments since 1918, related to tensions between the political and administrative interface in the Westminster Model (WM) (Richards and Smith 2016). Even those governments not focused on the detail of policy delivery and outcomes want to demonstrate to the electorate what has been achieved during their period in office as they progress towards the next general election. For civil servants, this is regarded as the administration of policy and those who surround ministers will not have this as their highest priority. They pass policy administration further down the organisation or to external agencies. As part of their 3-year postings, they do not have any long-term career commitments to achieving the outcomes included within these policies. They will expect to leave their post before policy can be evaluated and will not obtain their next post based on the successful administration of policies for which they have been responsible.