Improving Efficiency Board & Prof. Peter Hines

Prof. Peter Hines, S A Partners Chairman, has been invited to sit on the ‘Improving Efficiency Board’ at the Welsh Assembly office. This is an initiative that has been launched by Mark Drayford (Welsh Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government), in cooperation with Adam Price AM, his counterpart in Plaid Cymru.

The work is over an 18 month period and is designed to create a more efficient Welsh government with the purpose of the Board being to reduce bureaucracy by identifying administrative work which is of low value, or which could be undertaken less frequently or in a different way or not at all. The overarching aim is to make recommendations to Ministers on how to free up resources to be deployed to work on government priorities.

The Efficiency Board will be responsible to Mark Drakeford AM, in terms of any decision-making. Some areas eg grants and governance are the responsibility of the Permanent Secretary.

The Board comprises a small core group with sector representatives invited as required, depending on the agenda.

Those attending the first meeting were:

• Mark Drayford – Welsh Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government
• Shan Morgan – Permanent Secretary (Chair)
• Owen Evans – Deputy Permanent Secretary
• Andrew Jeffreys – Director, Treasury (Dep Chair)
• Margaret Davies – Strategic Budgeting
• Dean Medcraft – Director, ESNR
• Gawain Evans – Director of Finance
• Kerry Stephens – Grants Centre of Excellence
• David Richards – Director of Governance
• Jo Salway – Cabinet Office
• Andrew Goodall – NHS Chief Executive
• James Price – Dep Permanent Secretary, ESNR
• Peter Vaughan – South Wales Police
• Jacqui Weatherburn – Ceredigion College
• Professor Peter Hines – S A Partners, Cardiff