In your On My Agenda interview with Jerry Arnott, director of the new internal learning organisation for the Civil Service (CS Learning), you refer to the closure of the Civil Service College in Sunningdale.

This is very misleading. The correct references should have been to The National School of Government, which ran many courses at arm’s length from the Cabinet Office from 2005. These included but were by no means limited to residential programmes at Sunningdale Park, near Ascot. The National School was closed in March 2012, although Sunningdale Park remains, run by a prominent hotel and conferencing group.

The newly created Civil Service College Ltd has been established by former National School learning and development experts and is alive and well. We have successfully bid to be among the SMEs who will provide services to CS Learning, through its contract with Capita, and look forward to bringing the best of the National School into this new phase of Civil Service learning and development.

For your information the National School of Government evolved from the Civil Service College the name of which has not been used by the Civil Service for 13 years.

Chronology

The Civil Service College 1970 – 1999

Centre for Management and Policy Studies 1999 – 2000

CMPS 2000 – 2005

National School of Government 2005 – 2012