Bob Kerslake, a former head of the UK’s civil service and permanent secretary at the Department for Communities and Local Government, has died after being diagnosed with cancer, his family have announced. The crossbench peer died on Saturday aged 68. On Sunday morning, his sister, Ros Kerslake, tweeted: “My brother Bob (Lord Robert Kerslake) died yesterday after a short battle with cancer. We are all devastated.” A number of politicians paid tribute to Lord Kerslake following the news. The former prime minister David Cameron called him a “committed public official” and said he “served the coalition government with great professionalism after a long career in local government”. Senior Labour party figures including the leader, Keir Starmer, the shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting and the former shadow chancellor John McDonnell were among those who paid their respects to him. The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, described him as “a true public servant”, adding: “His kindness and commitment to improving our city and country will always be remembered.” Lisa Nandy, the shadow secretary for levelling up, housing and communities, said Kerslake was “a kind, thoughtful and genuine public servant who cared deeply about people. Bob was an endless source of advice and encouragement and his knowledge of central and local government was unparalleled.” Kerslake was head of the civil service from January 2012 to September 2014, and continued as a permanent secretary at the Department for Communities and Local Government.
In recent years, he had become increasingly outspoken about problems in the relationship between government and the civil service. In February 2022, he wrote in the Guardian about how the Partygate scandal had “damaged the public’s perception of the civil service”. “Trust is a precious commodity that takes a long time to build and is quickly lost,” he wrote. “There is no doubt that Partygate has significantly reinforced the decline in trust between the governing and the governed. The job of being a civil servant has been made a lot harder.” Kerslake served as chair of King’s College hospital NHS foundation trust, before he resigned in 2017 in protest at government underfunding of hospitals. He was also president of the Local Government Association from 2015 to 2021 and chair of the UK2070 Commission, an independent inquiry into urban and regional inequalities in the UK. Born in Bath, Somerset, Kerslake graduated with a mathematics degree from Warwick University and worked in a number of roles in local government before becoming chief executive of the London borough of Hounslow. He became chief executive of Sheffield city council in 1997, and then the Homes and Communities Agency (now Homes England). He was knighted in the 2005 New Year honours list for services to local government and made a peer in 2015.