Cabinet Office director general Elizabeth Perelman has left the civil service to run Rishi Sunak’s office.
Perelman was principal private secretary to Sunak throughout his premiership and also briefly PPS to Keir Starmer during his first few months as PM before becoming DG for public service reform and efficiency in the Cabinet Office in September.
As chief executive of The Office of Akshata Murty and Rishi Sunak, Perelman will oversee the couple's work, including their public and charitable endeavours.
Perelman’s move was confirmed by the government’s revolving-doors regulator, the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, which imposed its standard conditions for former high-ranking civil servants on the hire.
The committee said there is “no specific overlap” in Perelman’s responsibilities and decision-making at the Cabinet Office and the role with Sunak and Murty and so it found “no evidence of reward" in relation to Perelman's role in office.
It said Perelman had access to a broad range of privileged information whilst in office, including after Sunak left, but that the risks associated with this access to information were limited because there was no known information of relevance to the interests of the organisation she intends to join, and it has been five months since she was PPS to the current prime minister.
It added that much of the information from her time as PPS is "likely in the public domain or has moved on”.
Perelman told Acoba that the specifics of the office’s focus are yet to be confirmed but said there would be no contact with government in the role.
In a post on LinkedIn, Perelman said she was “happy to share” the news of her move.
Perelman joined the civil service in 2016 as a deputy director in HM Treasury, before becoming PPS to the chancellor of the exchequer in 2019 – first working for Sajid Javid and then for Sunak in the role.
After a short spell in the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities as director, Ukraine Humanitarian Taskforce, she joined No.10 as policy director in June 2022.
She was named PPS to Sunak in October 2022 after he became PM. She remained PPS under Starmer following Labour's election victory in July, before joining the Cabinet Office as DG for public service reform and efficiency in September.
Nin Pandit was appointed as the PPS to Starmer on secondment following Perelman's move to the Cabinet Office. The government launched an open competition recruitment process for the post in November.