June 2015
Senior management team
Chief Executive’s Office
Peter Lauener, Chief Executive of the Skills Funding Agency
The chief executive leads the agency and takes responsibility for all paid staff who run the agency on a day-to-day basis. Peter is also accounting officer for the SFA’s £4 billion annual budget and is accountable to BIS’s principal accounting officer, and to parliament for the stewardship of these funds. The SFA is an executive agency within the
Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. It funds skills training for further education in England, supporting over 1,000 colleges, private training organisations and employers with around £4 billion of funding each year.
Helen Knee, Deputy Director Chief Executive’s Office
The Chief Executive’s Office is at the heart of the organisation. Helen is responsible for leading, developing and delivering high-quality services specific to the senior management team and across the organisation.
The work of Helen and her team includes leading the corporate performance and risk management processes. With the secretariat for the key management and advisory boards, it ensures the SFA’s objectives are set and
pursued in the context of our values and ways of working.
There is also a small but specialist team delivering information compliance and security, which includes business continuity, freedom of information and physical and digital security.
The SFA has a strong communications team using well-established digital channels, but continually developing through insight and evaluation.
Working with marketing, Helen ensures integrated communications and campaigns with those that we need to hear the SFA’s messages and those that want to access our services.
There is also the key internal communications function that works with staff to enable them to be ambassadors for the SFA’s work.
Sue Husband, Director, Apprenticeships and Delivery Service
Sue leads the SFA’s work in engaging employers to increase participation in apprenticeships and
traineeships. This also includes encouraging colleges and providers to deliver more high-quality apprenticeships and traineeships.
She also leads the work of the National
Apprenticeship Service and the National Careers Service vacancy services.
Sue also has responsibility for providing expert advice and support to Local Enterprise
Partnerships and other local partners on the funding and skills elements of local growth plans.
Karen Woodward, Deputy Director Apprenticeships and Employer Policy Implementation
Karen leads on the implementation of
apprenticeship and employer ownership policy for BIS and the Department for Education.
The main aims for her team are to develop and drive strategies to deliver the government’s
agenda for apprenticeships as the primary means of improving the skills of the workforce and to ensure the SFA is focused on meeting the
Key priorities include supporting the change to the apprenticeship programme from frameworks to standards; developing new partnership arrangements with business organisations, leading on integrated marketing campaigns and the Apprenticeship Ambassador Network to stimulate even greater demand for apprenticeships from employers.
Tony Allen, Deputy Director Large Companies Unit
Tony leads on promoting apprenticeships and traineeships to larger employers. The Large Companies Unit team is responsible for managing all of the SFA’s relationships with larger employers, taking in industrial partnerships and employer ownership.
He and his team’s priorities are to maximise access among employers to SFA funding; to ensure a growth in apprenticeships and traineeships.
Joe Billington, Deputy Director Consumer Services
Joe leads the Consumer Services team that is responsible for providing high-quality services direct to citizens and employers who want to access learning to plan their careers, improve their skills or enhance their business.
Consumer Services combines all aspects of the SFA that deliver services direct to individuals and businesses, including apprenticeship vacancies, the Small Business Team, the Learner Records Service, the National Careers Service, and FE Choices.
Consumer Services is responsible for establishing coherent, responsive, flexible customer journeys through the variety of information, products and services that the SFA offers to businesses and citizens. The team works to integrate face-to-face, telephone, digital and intermediary services to help customers access the
information and advice they need to make decisions about how learning and skills can help them and their businesses flourish and thrive.
Deputy Directors Employer and Delivery Services
Nick Wilson
North East and Yorkshire
Under our National Apprenticeship Service brand, the area-based teams work with employers, colleges and providers to increase participation in apprenticeships and traineeships.
They provide expert advice and support to Local Enterprise Partnerships on the skills elements of local growth plans, especially European funding and capital funding. The London area team has additional resource to reflect the different governance arrangements, married to the scale of economic growth and opportunity in the capital.
Keith Smith, Director Funding and Programmes
Keith has worked in the employment and skills sector for more than 20 years during which time he has run local job clubs and schemes to support unemployed people back into work. He leads the SFA’s work on all policies that are implemented to support government’s ambitions for the further education and skills system. His responsibilities include oversight of
apprenticeships, the national adult skills budget,
services to support Local Enterprise Partnerships, and all other skills programmes
Claire Blott
North and West
Jill Lowery
London
Rachel McKellar
South
Nick Wilson
such as traineeships, 24+ advanced learning loans and qualifications. He designs and delivers all of the funding systems that support implementation of these policies. Keith is the budget holder for over £3 billion of public funding, including programme budgets paid to colleges, providers and employers.
Mike Bell, Deputy Director Localism Policy Implementation
Mike leads on the delivery of local skills policies and programmes and is responsible for ensuring the right systems and processes are in place to deliver effective and efficient local programmes. He is also responsible for providing leadership and professional services to Local Enterprise
Partnerships and other stakeholders. This is so that local programmes can make the maximum
contribution to government skills priorities.
At the same, time Mike will lead on making sure that the management and delivery of European Social Fund provision is compliant with all aspects of European Union regulation.
Una Bennett, Deputy Director Funding Systems
Una leads the delivery of the technical funding systems underpinning all adult further education skills programmes and apprenticeships.
She also leads the work with colleges, providers, employers and other stakeholders to set the rules for funding to deliver priorities set by government. A key priority is making sure our systems continue to be simplified and respond to the needs of learners and employers.
Una and her team determine how we fund provision, and specify the data we collect from colleges, providers and employers to calculate funding and other processes such as reporting. The team works with colleagues in the SFA and BIS on delivering major policy initiatives such as apprenticeship reform.
Kirsty Evans, Deputy Director Funding Policy Implementation
Kirsty leads on the implementation of funding policy in line with the government’s skills priorities, for all adult further education skills programmes other than apprenticeships.
This includes the key priorities of traineeships, English and maths as well as other programmes such as offender learning and community
learning.
She is also responsible for market entry and exit, subcontracting and qualifications. She also provides professional leadership and advice to senior colleagues across BIS, the Department for Education and the wider SFA to develop and lead the structured work programmes needed to ensure successful policy implementation.
The Provider Management and Intervention (PMI) function comprises three deputy director-led teams: (Karen Riley (north), Mary Rogers (central) Paul Lucken (south), providing national geographical coverage between them.
Working in a co-ordinated way with the Education Funding Agency, the PMI teams are the SFA’s interface with all non-college providers and all further education (FE) institutions for pre-intervention and formal intervention activities linked to quality, finance or both.
They provide professional leadership and advice to senior colleagues across BIS and the Department for Education. In conjunction with the Intervention Policy team,
Mary Rogers, Deputy Director Funding Policy Implementation
Deputy Director Provider Management & Intervention (North)
they provide the SFA’s support to the FE commissioner’s work with the FE sector. They will also support the Central Delivery Service’s provider and college
relationship where necessary (for example, supporting the allocations dialogue, the growth-point process and complaints management).
In particular, the three teams lead risk-based intervention with colleges and all providers, including strategies to mitigate risk, formal intervention processes and support for the FE commissioner.
They manage allocated local college and provider high-risk and intervention cases to conclusion, liaising with relevant stakeholders and reporting progress regularly. In addition, Mary leads the structured work programme work to implement policy for provider quality and intervention policy, including performance measures, monitoring and risk assessment. She is the senior reporting officer for the College Capital Investment Fund due to complete by April 2016 with post-project evaluation beyond this date.
Rich Williams, Deputy Director Programme Delivery and Performance
Rich leads on the performance reporting of
apprenticeships and other adult skills programme delivery against government priorities.
He is responsible for the strategic development and operation of data collections for the further education (FE) system. This includes its
transformation and storage for use across the post-16 sector.
He and his team work collaboratively with government, the FE sector and key stakeholders to secure commitment and delivery to high-quality and timely data returns. They also provide management information across the SFA and the sector to ensure transparency and compliance with the delivery of the government’s open data strategy in FE.
Paul McGuire, Chief Operating (and Financial) Officer
Paul is a qualified accountant with 25 years’ experience in finance across both the private and public sectors, including 10 years specifically in skills.
He is the board member who leads the
Operations directorate, and as Chief Financial Officer he is responsible for the financial
management, accounting and control of the £3.6 billion skills budget.
Paul is responsible for the design, delivery and maintenance of the core SFA business delivered through provider and employer allocations, contracting and provider financial management and assurance.
He also leads on the delivery of the following infrastructure services: digital and technology services, legal, human resources, telecommunications, facilities management and information technology, together with digital and technology services for the wider further education and skills sector.
Tim Clayton, Chief Digital Officer and Chief Information Officer
Tim leads on developing, delivering and operating all of our ‘digital by default’ public services, in line with government digital policy directives and as reflected in our digital strategy. He and his team ensure that our digital services are designed to meet user needs and are
iteratively improved over time.
Tim and his team also lead for the SFA on the use of the latest interactive ‘agile’ approaches to solution development, on both our internal and external-facing systems.
Finally, Tim leads the SFA’s centre of excellence for project and change delivery which offers support, best practice and resourcing to senior responsible owners (SROs) engaged in project delivery.
Judi Cooper, Deputy Director Allocations and Systems
Judi leads on implementing SFA policies and systems to allocate around £3.6 billion of skills funds across 1,200 providers. This includes delivering an in-year performance management process to reconcile provider contracts/grants and redistribute funds.
She is also responsible for developing and implementing the systems to manage and monitor all allocated programme funds for
mainstream, learner support funds and ESF to approved providers within budget for the contracting year.
Béatrice Lightfoot, Deputy Director Chief Technology Officer
Béatrice leads on the transformation of our technology platform to cloud-based services and the transformation of our supply chain to a new multi-vendor environment that offers
opportunities for small and medium enterprises. She and her team manage the SFA’s portfolio of business applications and delivers modern
technologies and systems that meet the needs of the SFA and enable the first generation of digital services.
She leads on moving to common technology services and commodity services, rationalising and simplifying our estate, reducing our dependence on existing legacy systems and contracts in line with the government’s ICT strategy.
Jim Minogue, Deputy Director Financial Control and Procurement
Jim leads on managing the provision of financial accounting across the SFA, ensuring that
financial policy, control, reporting, and
accounting services are robust and capture all of the SFA’s accounting transactions.
He and his team provide SFA senior
timely and accurate financial reporting leading to the annual report and the provision of year-end financial statements.
In addition, Jim leads on managing the SFA’s procurement processes for both education and training, and other goods and services, including digital/IT services. As part of this responsibility, Jim’s team maintains and publishes the SFA’s register of providers.
Jim’s team also co-ordinates the production of the annual business plan for the SFA and is responsible for property management.
Stephen Packham, Deputy Director Financial Management
Stephen leads the management of financial controls and the independent challenge to budget management and financial expenditure and forecasts through SFA-wide business partnering.
He and his team ensure comprehensive financial planning, forecasting and budgetary systems are in place to support the SFA in achieving its objectives.
The SFA’s legal and complaints function are also part of this team.
Raza Raheem, Deputy Director Business Insight and Competency Centre and Shared Services
Raza leads on managing the Enterprise
Performance Management System, centralising financial data collection into a single collection point for the BIS family, and then manipulating the data collected, for example consolidating or interrogating it.
The intention is then to add in other functional datasets, so that opportunities for aligning financial and non-financial management information data can be fully exploited, enhancing business intelligence.
In addition, Raza leads on the shared services agenda for the SFA and is the
operational lead providing challenge to budget management in respect of the SFA’s administration, capital programme and ICT budgets.
Karen Sherry, Deputy Director Central Delivery Services
Karen leads the work needed to deliver and embed an end-to-end contract management service for providers and employers,
incorporating: contract administration, contract compliance, robust performance management, operational procurement and risk management. She and her team will lead and manage the CDS Service Centre (CDSSC) giving providers and employers a ‘first point of contact’ for
data/system-related issues and queries. This
service will move towards becoming a mixed-media support function that embraces new channels of communications that may include instant messaging, online chat and direct email from Service Now, the SFA’s query-handling system, alongside the more traditional email and phone contact.
Karen and her team will support the sector in the effective delivery of the new
European Social Fund programme through a rolling programme of provider briefings, provider compliance visits, effective performance-management and continuous improvement.
Chris Griffin, Deputy Director Provider Finance Management and Assurance
Chris leads the delivery of a financial assurance service for the appropriate use of funds by colleges and training organisations within the SFA’s oversight to the chief executive of the SFA and indirectly to the Education Funding Agency based on an agreed joint audit code of practice. He and his team deliver reviews to provide assurance over the funding claimed by providers and financial assessment of providers as part of the SFA’s due diligence, risk management and intervention processes.
They also provide professional support to internal audit (although internal audit will maintain an independent reporting line to the SFA’s chief executive).
