Peter Housden

Peter Housden (born 1950) is Permanent Secretary of the Department for Communities and Local Government (formerly Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) (UK), a post he has held since October 2005.

Housden is unusual for a senior civil servant, having been educated at a comprehensive school, and having neither graduated from Oxbridge nor worked in the Civil Service for a great number of years.

He was educated at Grove Comprehensive School, Market Drayton, Shropshire and at the University of Essex where he took a First in Social Science. After graduating in 1973, Peter Housden began his career as a comprehensive school teacher in Shropshire and worked as an education officer in three county LEAs before being appointed as Director of Education in Nottinghamshire in 1991. In 1994, Peter was appointed as Chief Executive and in his seven years in that post managed Nottinghamshire County Council through Local Government Review and a wide-ranging programme of modernisation. In September 2000 he was seconded to the Audit Commission for six months to lead their work on the NHSNational Plan.

Peter joined the Department for Education and Skills in November 2001 as Director General for Schools. He had overall responsibility for all the Department's work in schools and in early years, and for current priorities on primary standards and secondary reform. He held this role until his appointment as Permanent Secretary of ODPM in 2005. [http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page8224.asp]

Peter Housden is an associate fellow of Warwick Business School at the University of Warwick, and a Trustee of the Work Foundation. His publications include 'Local Statesman', an oral history of post-war local government in Nottinghamshire published by the Local Government Centre, Warwick University in 2000, and 'Bucking the Market: LEAs and Special Needs' (NASEN, 1993).