*** Welcome to piglix ***

UK Cabinet Office

Cabinet Office
Welsh: Swyddfa'r Cabinet
Cabinet Office logo.svg
Cabinet Office (29542331802).jpg
Cabinet Office, Whitehall
Department overview
Formed December 1916
Preceding Department
Jurisdiction United Kingdom
Headquarters 70 Whitehall, London, England
Employees 1,668FTE
Annual budget £2.1 billion (current) & £400 million (capital) for 2011–12
Ministers responsible
Department executives
Child Department
Website www.gov.uk/cabinetoffice

The Cabinet Office is a department of the Government of the United Kingdom responsible for supporting the Prime Minister and Cabinet of the United Kingdom. It is composed of various units that support Cabinet committees and which co-ordinate the delivery of government objectives via other departments. It currently has just over 2,000 staff, most of whom work in Whitehall. Staff working in the Prime Minister's Office are part of the Cabinet Office.

The Cabinet Office's core functions are:

Other functions include oversight of the Crown Commercial Service and the accreditation of Social Impact Contractors.

The department was formed in December 1916 from the secretariat of the Committee of Imperial Defence under Sir Maurice Hankey, the first Cabinet Secretary.

Traditionally the most important part of the Cabinet Office's role was facilitating collective decision-making by the Cabinet, through running and supporting Cabinet-level committees. This is still its principal role, but since the absorption of some of the functions of the Civil Service Department in 1981 the Cabinet Office has also helped to ensure that a wide range of Ministerial priorities are taken forward across Whitehall.

It also contains miscellaneous units that do not sit well in other departments. For example:

In modern times the Cabinet Office often takes on responsibility for areas of policy that are the priority of the Government of the time. The units that administer these areas migrate in and out of the Cabinet Office as government priorities (and governments) change.


...
Wikipedia

...