Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency’s CEO Julie Lennard will take the post of chief operating officer at CPS, where she will continue to play a key role in digital government
Julie Lennard will join the Crown Prosecution Service next month as chief operating officer.
Lennard (pictured above), who has been the chief executive of the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency since 2018, will start her new director general-level role on 25 November. Lennard’s role will see her work with partners to direct significant change across the criminal justice system. She will be responsible for overseeing transformation and improvement within the CPS, as well as setting the overall strategy for the organisation’s corporate functions, including finance, people and digital.
Supporting technology and digitisation has formed a key part of Lennard’s remit in her current role; appearing at the PublicTechnology Live conference earlier this year, she told attendees about the organisation’s use of data to support operations and policymaking, as well as discussing the importance of taking cues from the consumer world.
Her new posting is part of a shake-up of the CPS’s management structure, creating two new roles. The COO and DG for legal delivery will jointly share executive responsibility for the strategic management of the service, its 7,000-plus workforce, its performance, and its £890m budget, alongside their individual responsibilities.
The two DGs will work closely with the director of public prosections – who heads up the CPS – and provide visible leadership and direction to develop and deliver the agency’s vision and strategic priorities.
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Commenting on Lennard’s appointment, Stephen Parkinson, director of public prosecutions, said: “Julie brings a wealth of valuable skills and experience to the CPS – not least her work to successfully lead the digital and business transformation of the DVLA. She has also transformed the way customers interact with the organisation with some truly impressive results. I am very much looking forward to welcoming Julie to our executive team in the autumn.”
Lennard has spent the last decade at the DVLA, joining as director of strategy, policy and communications in 2014 and becoming chief exec four years later.
She said the DVLA “has been an amazing place to work” and that “it’s been a privilege to lead such a brilliant organisation and such a talented team of people”.
“The role has been very rewarding but the opportunity to join the Crown Prosecution Service as director general was just too good an opportunity to miss,” she added. “It’s a fascinating time to join and I’m looking forward to meeting the team and helping to lead the CPS to an exciting future.”
Before working at the DVLA, Lennard had several roles at The National Archives and before that worked for Which?, the largest consumer organisation in Europe.