The 2024–25 Heywood Fellowship sets out to examine how governments come to a national view of what really matters over longer time horizons, the ways governments can best confront and tackle future problems, and how the configuration, mechanisms and capabilities of the state can best enable the pursuit and delivery of long-term outcomes for citizens.

Over the coming months, the Heywood Fellowship team will share working papers as they study examples from across the UK and the world, and design and develop a contemporary practice of national strategy. Please keep checking back for updates as our thinking progresses.

The Heywood Fellowship is a visiting fellowship created in memory of Jeremy Heywood, Cabinet Secretary from 2012 to 2018, to give a UK Civil Service Permanent Secretary the opportunity to explore issues relating to public service and policy outside of the immediate responsibilities of government duties. 

Jeremy Heywood – Lord Heywood of Whitehall – served as Cabinet Secretary from January 2012 to October 2018. He was also Head of the Civil Service from September 2014. Jeremy Heywood had previously served three Prime Ministers in 10 Downing Street as Principal Private Secretary to Tony Blair (1998–2003) and Permanent Secretary in Number 10 to Gordon Brown (2008–10) and to David Cameron (2010–12). In previous roles in the Civil Service, Jeremy Heywood served as Principal Private Secretary to successive Chancellors of the Exchequer, Norman Lamont (1991–3) and Kenneth Clarke (1993–4). 

Jeremy Heywood was committed to innovation in public service and to broadening the civil service so that its diversity more fully represented the citizens it serves. These priorities lie at the heart of the work of the Heywood Foundation which was established in his memory.

The Heywood Foundation and the Blavatnik School, University of Oxford, have established the Heywood Visiting Fellowship with support from the Cabinet Office. The Fellow will be associated with Hertford College, Lord Heywood’s former college.