Director, Covid Recovery and Restart, Llywodraeth Cymru / Welsh Government

Policy Fellow Alum, Centre for Science and Policy

Simon Brindle was formerly Director of Y Lab, a public services innovation laboratory for Wales. It is a partnership between Nesta, the UK innovation charity, and Cardiff University. Their aim is to support the development and implementation of new ideas across Welsh public services, drawing on the knowledge and capacity in Nesta and research centres across the university.

Simon is a senior policy maker with in-depth expertise in tax and strategic investment, an extensive track record in policy design and coordination, and practical knowledge of large-scale service delivery, corporate governance and leadership. From 2013 he was programme director for the Welsh Government’s programme to transform social services and Head of Policy Profession, Welsh Government.

Prior to this, he was Corporate Director for Wellbeing at Bridgend County Borough Council, and Programme Director for Western Bay Health and Social Care, leading a department of 2000 staff delivering adult social care and health living services including public health, sport, leisure and adult community learning. He was responsible for directing day-to-day services, overseeing high-quality customer care and achieving significant savings.

Previous roles in the Welsh Government included Deputy Director, School Management and Effectiveness (2010-11), leading a division of 76 people in reforming the Welsh school system; Deputy Director, Funding and Student Finance (2008-10); Director of Higher Learning (2007-8), leading a group of five divisions covering Higher Education policy, Student Finance, European and International education issues; and Deputy Director, Student Finance (2007).

Prior to joining the Welsh Government, Simon was a Management Consultant undertaking government strategy consulting for Accenture (2005-7), including roles advising HMRC on a £1.9Bn change programme, and business case development for £100m replacement to the National Insurance Revenue System. His early career was at HM Treasury (1995-2006) as Head of Strategy and Change, where his work included reforms to infrastructure investment appraisal such as CrossRail, designing a new capital strategy for health, and coordinating the Budget scorecard and 'Red Book'. His first role was as Statistical Analyst, Consumer Prices & General Inflation at the Office for National Statistics.

Simon holds an MBA from Imperial College (2001), an MSc in Applied Statistics (1993) from University College London, and a BSc in Maths from Imperial (1991). He also spent 3 years researching with a CASE studentship in Applied Statistics (no degree).