Our Story

Heywood Foundation

The Heywood Foundation was set up in memory of Jeremy Heywood (Lord Heywood of Whitehall) in 2018. Its purpose is to promote innovation and diversity within the public sector.

The Heywood Foundation has fulfilled its purpose by doing two things. First, it has supported senior civil servants to take a sabbatical to work on long term public policy issues at the Blavatnik School in Oxford. The most recent Heywood Fellow, Jonathan Black, researched the intersection of economic and foreign policy, and returned to the Civil Service having completed his sabbatical in early 2024. Second, the Foundation has run a global public policy competition, which invites people to suggest ways in which public policy could be improved. This competition is open to anyone and the winners and their ideas are listed on the Foundation’s website Some of these suggestions have already been implemented (for example, the idea of an NHS Reserve Force).

Heywood Quarterly

In 2024, the Heywood Foundation reimagined a key publication that was originally launched by Jeremy Heywood: the Civil Service Quarterly. This publication was designed to showcase innovation in public policy and delivery through a series of high quality articles written by civil servants. It was very popular, with a readership in the tens of thousands, but it was discontinued at the start of the Covid pandemic due to understandable pressures on the public sector.

This highly valued publication has been brought back through the Foundation with an updated scope. Although the Foundation is closely connected to the Civil Service, with several current and ex-civil servants on the Board, by virtue of being a charity, it remains separate. Heywood Quarterly has an independent Editor-in-Chief from outside of the public sector, and has the freedom to source articles from a greater range of sources. We continue to be guided by updated editorial principles, seeking to be independent, transparent, constructive, practical, and politically neutral. Our aim is to maintain the high editorial standards of the Civil Service Quarterly, focusing on fresh, readable and actionable learnings from policy and innovation.

We are humbled by the support we have received from all parts of the Civil Service, including the Cabinet Secretary, in this endeavour, and look forward to many successful years of the Heywood Quarterly.

Introduction from the Editor-In-Chief

For a full introduction to Heywood Quarterly and our mission, please read “An Introduction to Heywood Quarterly”, written by our Editor-In-Chief, Tim Dickson.