Mike Granatt

Mike Granatt, CB, a former senior British civil servant, was the first head of the Civil Contingencies Secretariat of the Cabinet Office in 2001.

For nearly 20 years Granatt held a range of the most senior communication posts in British government service, and was press secretary to five cabinet ministers, both Conservative and Labour. Alongside his management roles he specialised in crisis and counterterrorist issues, and in his final posting simultaneously created and led Britain's civil crisis management unit and the professional grouping of government communication specialists.

Early life

Granatt attended Queen Mary College, University of London where he ran the students' union newspaper for two years. He briefly appeared in what its members considered the legendary folk/rock band Pig Rider penning some of the lyrics for the curiously mis-titled Paeolithic Transport Blues.

After some years as a newspaper journalist, Granatt joined the civil service in 1979 as an information officer. After junior postings in the Department of Employment and the Home Office, he joined the Department of Energy and became director of information within three years. He was responsible for all news and marketing communication work, and was a member of the department’s management board. He went on to hold similar posts for the Metropolitan Police, the Department of the Environment and the Home Office.

While at the Home Office he was appointed head of profession for the Government Information Service, becoming full time in that post on transfer to the Cabinet Office in 1998. This move, to provide direct support to Sir Richard Wilson (now Lord Wilson of Dinton), then cabinet secretary, was made to help deliver changes facing the renamed Government Information and Communication Service (GICS after Labour won power in 1997.

Although much of his work concentrated on reforms, including new recruitment and training arrangements, he was also the central adviser on the ethics and guidance governing the work of the GICS and other givernment communication staff. These civil servants were continually under political pressure from ministers' special advisers, from the new politically led Downing Street news operation run by Alastair Campbell, and from some ministers.

Work at CCS

Granatt also took a leading role in co-ordinating public information from government during the run up to the millennium, the nationwide fuel protests of 2000, and the foot and mouth disease outbreak in 2001. As a result he was asked to set up the Civil Contingencies Secretariat (CCS), a job he held in parallel with the GICS post after the government failed to find a candidate qualified to succeed him.

Until 2001 the Home Office carried out emergency preparedness planning through its Emergency Planning Division, which had replaced the Home Defence and Emergency Services Division. CCS was formed in June 2001, and its mission to update the UK’s emergency planning arrangements was swept up in the counterterrorist reforms following September 11, 2001.

Having established the secretariat, in 2002 Granatt reverted to the sole job of leading the GICS and was promoted to director-general. At deputy secretary level, this was at the second highest rank in the civil service.

In 2003, Granatt took early retirement following a view into the GICS which suggested further changes and leadership at top (permanent secretary) level. He volunteered to go observing that not even he would appoint himself after nearly seven years in the job.

Granatt joined city consultancy Luther Pendragon in 2004. Currently he is also visiting professor at the University of Westminster; senior associate fellow at the Defence Academy of the UK, a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, master of the City of Public Relations Practitioners and chairman of the UK Press Card Authority.

He is also a commentator for the BBC on the handling of terrorism and major emergencies.