Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, has formally announced that he will stand down as the UK’s most senior civil servant at the end of the year.
In an email to the civil service, Case, who has served four prime ministers and 120 cabinet ministers, said he would stay in post while the process to replace him got under way.
His long-planned departure on health grounds comes after a turbulent few weeks for the Downing Street operation marked by damaging leaks and internal rows, with Keir Starmer understood to have grown increasingly frustrated.
The prime minister has been urged by cabinet ministers and senior aides to “get a grip” on the situation to avoid it undermining the government, so the departure of the UK’s most senior civil servant gives him the opportunity to reset.
Case had already acknowledged he intended to leave in the new year for health reasons, but the lack of a formal announcement meant No 10 had been unable to properly kickstart the hunt for a successor.
In his message to the civil service, Case said: “As many of you know, I have been undergoing medical treatment for a neurological condition over the last 18 months and, whilst the spirit remains willing, the body is not.
“It is a shame that I feel I have to spell this out, but my decision is solely to do with my health and nothing to do with anything else.”
During his four-year tenure, Case has overseen the government’s response to the Covid pandemic and the cost of living crisis, as well as representing the civil service at a time when it came under attack from senior Conservative party advisers and cabinet ministers.
“The challenges of the 21st century have to be met with a determination to solve problems across organisational boundaries and through the lens of life far outside Whitehall and Westminster,” he said.
“An institution such as ours can only play its role in driving out the darkness of ignorance if we remain relentlessly curious about better ways to understand our world and design and deliver public services.”
The Guardian reported last week that the situation in No 10 was likely to come to a head after Starmer returned from his trip to the United Nations in New York, amid dismay at tensions across the government involving Sue Gray, his chief of staff.
The job advert for his replacement will go live on Monday, with the former John Lewis chief Sharon White and the Ofcom chief, Melanie Dawes, both thought to be in the frame.
