Mouchel appoints new MD for its consulting business

21 June 2010

Mouchel has today announced a change to the senior management of its Management Consulting business, which specialises in public-sector transformation.

The move comes a week after the consulting and business services group announced plans for a wider re-organisation of its management, repositioning itself to reflect the short-term post election slow-down in its core markets and to build on the increase in demand for private sector participation in the delivery of public services, which is expected to follow as councils and government departments come under increasing pressure to cut costs and deliver better services for less money.

Steven Foster, who was brought in to join the Consulting division's management team last year, becomes Managing Director of Management Consulting, replacing Kru Desai, who has decided to return to her former employer, KPMG after just a year as MD in Mouchel.

"We've got some of the best and most specialist consultants in this area", said Foster, "and the current financial crisis facing our public services is going to accelerate innovation and new ways of working more than perhaps any other event in the last 50 years.  I am thrilled to have been given the responsibility of leading this business and such a talented team of consultants."

Richard Cuthbert, Chief Executive of Mouchel Group, also commented on the changes:

"We have invested in building our Management Consultancy business in recent years to make it a vital part of the Group.  This change represents the next stage of our evolution.  Our Consulting business works directly for clients across the public services arena but also combines with the rest of the Group to facilitate change and transformation in the many BPO, property and highway services partnerships we manage throughout the UK. Ensuring that Consulting is well led and is positioned as an integral component of Mouchel's service offer, is crucial to our continuing success. In the current environment, every part of Mouchel has to be able to adapt quickly to emerging market needs.  We are very confident that the changes we have announced today will ensure our continuing success and that we are optimally placed to take advantage of the opportunities that will appear as the public sector markets come to terms with the changes being introduced by the coalition government."

Mouchel's management consulting business employs around 350 permanent staff and draws on a network of more than 500 associates and freelance staff.  The business works with clients in local and central government, in health and in education. Mouchel Management Consulting was appointed earlier in the year to deliver the Department of Health's Centre for Workforce Intelligence, a national research and advisory service that will inform future thinking on resourcing decisions in the NHS.