Credit: Gerd Altmann/Pixabay

The Cabinet Office has launched a recruitment campaign to find the first permanent chief executive of the fledgling Public Sector Fraud Authority, which was set up last year to spearhead work to protect public finances.

It is offering a salary of up to £120,000 a year for the successful applicant for the role, which could be based in London, York, Newcastle-upon-Tyne or Glasgow.

Mark Cheeseman is currently serving as interim chief executive of the authority, set up to use data analytics and other technology-centric techniques to help departments understand the threat – and multibillion-pound cost – from fraud, set targets for tackling it, and assess the government’s progress. 

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Around 16,000 public servants work in fraud response, according to the Cabinet Office. It said the PSFA’s new chief executive would be accountable for creating a system where the government’s response to fraud is “increasingly modernised and continuously improving”.

“The CEO will be the leader of this new organisation,” it said in its job advertisement. “They will be the expert voice, supported by other experts in the advisory panel, the executive committee and the SCS functional leads in departments. They will be the definitive voice on the level of fraud risk, threat and loss, the level of performance in dealing with this and the direction of travel for countering fraud against the public sector. They will be responsible for ensuring that structures are built to assess the quality of counter fraud work. They will be accountable for the creation and performance of specialist services to support departments and public bodies that will have measured and auditable outcomes.”

Applications are open until 11pm on 26 February. Consultantcy Odgers Berndtson is running the search.