Talk:Permanent secretary (UK)

Sources

I have been through the websites of all government departments. I can find no evidence that there are 25 Permanent Secretaries and 15 Second Permanent Secretaries, as has been stated. Almost all the websites (the DTI is the only exception, since the website is being reorganised) list the senior personnel of their departments. Only the departments I have listed describe their heads as a PS, and only those I have listed describe the deputy head as an SPS. Not one lists more than one SPS. I would ask that without hard evidence to the contrary, these are not changed. One would imagine that the departments know who their own senior managers are! I suspect there is confusion arising because some heads and deputy heads of departments hold the same grades as PS and SPS, but do not actually hold the title, which is what this article is about. -- Necrothesp 01:24, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Appointment

Who appoints a permanent secretary? And to whom a permanent secretary is responsible? (in other words, who can actually sack them?) 91.146.31.63 (talk) 18:22, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Another question would be a permanent secretary really peremanent? It doesn't appear so, so why the name "permanent" which implies that the person cannot be fired.--RossF18 (talk) 23:17, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Permanent, I think, meaning that the servant remains in office even in the event of a change of government. AGK 16:42, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Proposal to make page less UK-centric

I've been working on pages for permanent secretaries in Hong Kong and was wondering if it makes sense to make the Permanent Secretary page less UK-centric? The difference and relation between Secretaries and Permanent Secretaries is not well known (here in Hong Kong, at least) and I was hoping to find a suitable page to wikilink to, but it seemed a bit odd to link to a page a British civil service position page.

What I propose: changing the header to "The Permanent Secretary is the most senior civil servant of a ministry or bureau in the United Kingdom and several Commonwealth countries, charged with running the department on a day-to-day basis." We could bundle History, Role, Honours and Current under an In the UK header and then make separate subheads under Outside the UK for Sri Lanka, Ireland, Singapore, Hong Kong and section called Equivalents for the rest?

Thoughts?

—A L T E R C A R I  ✍ 04:09, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

Update request

Please update the entry for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Government Chief Scientific Adviser. This is now Patrick Vallance. His Wiki page is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Vallance — Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.225.81.41 (talk) 09:28, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

Done, with source. Verbcatcher (talk) 21:21, 7 September 2018 (UTC)

Move to non-paranthetical name?

Policy encourages us to use common names where possible, but where they clash parentheses are possible but slightly-less-common names are also an option. Permanent Under-Secretary has been a redirect here (originally when this was the main name) and is only slightly less familiar (compare number of inbound links). @Tony1, given you re-named this article last year (don't see a discussion?), what do you think? James F. (talk) 12:42, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

What would you like to see the title be? Tony (talk) 00:24, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

@Tony1: As I said, Permanent Under-Secretary is short enough and common enough, but we could go with others. James F. (talk) 07:06, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

I don't understand why it should be capitalised, nor why the country shouldn't be in the title. Tony (talk) 07:28, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

Per naming policy, parantheses shouldn't be used unless we have no real choice. Capitalisation is correct for the name of the job, but we could do it lower-case if you insist? James F. (talk) 09:20, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

That thing against parentheses is a relic from the past practice of allowing the first article on a topic not to be clear about its location or context: disastrous. Many countries have under-secretaries, and I'd resent having to go to the article to find it's not what I was looking for. MOSCAPS says, like most good style guides, not to cap unnecessarily. Tony (talk) 11:08, 7 July 2024 (UTC)