After an 18-year career in the Civil Service, Dame Louise Casey has announced that she will be leaving government later this year to take up new opportunities in the voluntary sector and academia.

Dame Louise said:

It has been an incredible privilege to work at the heart of government on some of the most challenging and important areas of social policy including homelessness, poverty, protecting communities from crime and anti-social behaviour, child sexual exploitation, troubled families and social integration and exclusion. I would like to thank everybody who I have worked with in this time for what we have achieved together in helping those less fortunate than ourselves. I wish all those that I have had the pleasure to serve and work with over the last 18 years the very best wishes for all their future work. While I am leaving the Civil Service, I am not leaving public service and will be pursuing a number of issues close to my heart.

Further information

Dame Louise will leave the Civil Service in the summer to take up her new roles.

Dame Louise has served 4 Prime Ministers in a number of roles in government, most recently publishing the Casey Review into social integration and opportunity in December 2016.

Other roles included: Director General of the Troubled Families Team at the Department for Communities and Local Government; Director of the Home Office’s Anti-Social Behaviour Unit; Head of the cross-government Respect Task Force, tackling anti-social behaviour; Director General in the Home Office, heading up the Neighbourhood Crime and Justice Group; and Director of the Rough Sleepers Unit.

Dame Louise was also the first independent Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses of Crime. And in 2015 she published an independent inspection into Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council following Professor Alexis Jay’s report into child sexual exploitation in the town.

Prior to joining the Civil Service in 1999 she worked as Deputy Director of the homelessness charity Shelter and in a number of other roles in the voluntary sector.

Dame Louise received the Companion of the Order of Bath (CB) in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list 2008 and was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2016 for services to families and vulnerable people.