Former Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs director general Lucy Smith has been selected as the third senior civil servant to undertake an Oxford University fellowship created in memory of late cabinet secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood.
Smith was most recently DG for strategy at Defra, a role she held from 2020 until June this year. Before that she was director general of the UK Governance Group at the Cabinet Office. During the coalition government, Smith was principal private secretary to deputy prime minister Nick Clegg.
She now follows former Department for Exiting the European Union perm sec Sir Olly Robbins and former prime ministerial G7 and G20 "sherpa" Jonathan Black in being made a "Heywood Fellow".
The fellowship gives a senior UK civil servant a nine-month opportunity to explore issues relating to public service and policy outside of their immediate government duties with the support of the Blavatnik School of Government and Hertford College.
Smith will use her fellowship to examine how governments can succeed at long-term strategy, "driven by the recognition that strategies developed now need to succeed in contexts that are profoundly different from today, and reflect the evolving needs, beliefs and hopes of citizens".
The Heywood Foundation said her work would look at how governments come to a national view of what really matters over longer time horizons and the ways governments can best confront and tackle future problems. Smith will also explore how the configuration, mechanisms and capabilities of the state can best enable the pursuit and delivery of long-term outcomes for citizens.
Smith said she was extremely pleased to be appointed as the third Heywood Fellow.
"I was lucky to learn from Jeremy that relentless curiosity and appetite for new and better ways of doing things is a vital part of successful government," she said. "To explore such a significant question of policy and practice as part of his legacy is a great privilege.
"I am also delighted to be following Jonathan Black as the previous fellow, and to build on his important work seeking a deeper integration of policy-making across domains in response to global strategic challenges."
Suzanne Heywood, widow of Sir Jeremy – who died in 2018 at the age of 56 – and chair of the Heywood Foundation, said Smith had chosen a highly relevant area for her research.
"The Heywood Foundation is delighted to support Lucy’s fellowship and very much looking forward to seeing her thinking, at a time when long-term strategic thinking is ever more important for policy makers," she said.