Chris Wormald standing down as UK’s top civil servant

Sir Chris Wormald is standing down as Sir Keir Starmer’s Cabinet Secretary.

The Prime Minister said he had come to a mutual decision with Sir Chris that he would go.

Sir Chris was widely expected to be on his way out as the UK’s top civil servant as the Prime Minister seeks to reset his Downing Street operation after controversies surrounding the appointments of Lord Peter Mandelson and Lord Matthew Doyle despite their association with sex offenders.

He becomes the third of Sir Keir’s senior advisers to quit in the past week, after chief of staff Morgan McSweeney and communications director Tim Allan.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch claimed Sir Keir had thrown Sir Chris “under the bus in order to save his own skin”.

The Prime Minister said: “I am very grateful to Sir Chris for his long and distinguished career of public service, spanning more than 35 years, and for the support that he has given me over the past year.

“I have agreed with him that he will step down as Cabinet Secretary today.

“I wish him the very best for the future.”

No 10 earlier declined to “comment on speculation” when asked about rumours that Dame Antonia Romeo, the Home Office permanent secretary, will take over the Whitehall reins.

Dame Antonia has been announced as one of three interim replacements for Sir Chris, performing the role jointly with Cabinet Office permanent secretary Cat Little and Treasury permanent secretary James Bowler.

The Cabinet Office said Sir Keir was expected to appoint a new cabinet secretary “shortly”.

Sir Chris held the post for just 14 months.

As a career civil servant, his appointment in December 2024 raised eyebrows at a time when Sir Keir was pushing a desire to rewire the British state.

Sir Chris joined the Civil Service in 1991 when he took on a role at the Department for Education, rising to the position of principal permanent secretary.

After moving in 2006 to what was then the Department for Communities and Local Government, where he was promoted to become director general of local government and regeneration, he joined the Cabinet Office as head of the economic and domestic affairs secretariat in 2009.

After the 2010 general election, Sir Chris became head of the deputy prime minister’s office, working alongside Nick Clegg.

He returned to the Department for Education in 2012 as permanent secretary before moving on to head the Department for Health and Social Care in 2016, where he worked under seven health secretaries.

He succeeded Simon Case as Cabinet Secretary.

Dame Antonia has been seen as a high-flyer in the Civil Service, having been permanent secretary at the Department for International Trade and the Ministry of Justice before taking up the top job at the Home Office last year.

Reports that she was being lined up to replace Sir Chris drew a rare intervention from former Foreign Office mandarin Lord Simon McDonald, who said the appointment process should “start from scratch”.

Lord McDonald, who was permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office during Dame Antonia’s time there, warned the Prime Minister against “doing the due diligence too late”.

Dame Antonia was reportedly investigated when she was Britain’s consul general in New York in 2017 over her expenses and claims of bullying, but was cleared by the Cabinet Office. A Government source said there was “absolutely no basis for this criticism”.

Another source went further, describing Dame Antonia as “a disrupter” and calling Lord McDonald’s intervention “a desperate attempt from a senior male official whose time has passed but spent their career getting Britain into the mess it finds itself in today”.

The FDA union, which represents senior civil servants, said Sir Chris’s departure marked a “new low” in the Government’s relationship with the service.

FDA general secretary Dave Penman criticised “vague and unsubstantiated” anonymous briefings against Sir Chris, which he said had sought to “scapegoat him and undermine his authority”.

Mr Penman added: “What message does this send to the rest of the Civil Service on how they can be expected to be treated?

“A Government that, only last month, said that it wants its civil servants to take risks and that ministers will have their back if they do, has just undermined that message in spectacular fashion.”