Serco has announced the appointment of Liz Benison as the new chief executive for its UK and Europe, local & regional government division.

Benison will be responsible for Serco’s work with local government clients, European institutions and some private sector clients covering health, environmental services, leisure, support operations for European agencies and facilities management services.

She is joining from Computer Science Corp (CSC) where she has spent the last three years as VP and general Manager for the UK. 

“I am hugely excited to be joining Serco and look forward to working with the team to develop the business and deliver our operational promises to customers,” she said.

Serco’s UK and Europe, local & regional Government division had revenues of more than £900m in 2013 and employed more than 14,000 staff.

Rupert Soames, Serco Group Chief Executive Officer, said: “Liz has huge experience of building businesses through strong relationships with clients and delivering complex and long term contracts. 

“My thanks go to Andrew White who has led our Local & Regional Government division with great effectiveness and passion for the last eight months and our former UK&E division from November last year during a challenging and sensitive time.”

The appointment came shortly after the company announced a loss of £7.3m for the first six months of this year, a drop of 107% over the same period last year, when it made a profit of £106.1m

The company was banned from bidding for central UK government contracts after it was caught over-billing on its contracts to tag prisoners in some regions.

At CSC, Benison managed a business of over £1bn and 8,000 employees, with over half of its revenues coming from government customers.

She will join Serco on 1 September and will be a member of the group’s executive committee.