Prison service head to recruit civil servanits

By a Staff Reporter

Mr Dennis Trevelyan, the director-general of the Prison Service. is to become First Commissioner. in charge of the Civil Service Commission, the semi-autonomous body responsible for recruitment of officials.

Mr Trevelyan's appointment was announced by the Prime Minister's Office yesterday with another significant move at the top of the Civil Service.

Mr David Williamson, a former official of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and now a deputy director general of the European Commission in Brussels, is to return to Britain to take charge of the European Secretariat of the Cabinet Office, with the rank of deputy secretary.

At the Home Office Mr Trevelyan, aged 53, had the task of carrying the prison service through the various reformis recommended by the May committee. His departure yes-

terday elicited praise from the Prison Reforn Trust, rarely an ally of the Home Office officials. It complimented Mr Trevelyan on the relative openness of the prison system.

As First Civil Service Commissioner Mr Trevelyan will be a deputy secretary in the Management and Personnel Office, although his appointment is unlikely to dispel the clouds that still hang over that department's future.

He is succeeded at the Home Office by Mr Christopher Train, aged 50. the department's Principal Finance Officer.

Mr David Hancock recently moved from the Cabinet Office to become Permanent Secretarv at the Department of Education and Science, charged (it is thought) with applying firm management to a department the Prime Minister has often criticized.