Introduction
The Secretary of State for Transport may invite a non-executive director to serve as Deputy Chair and Senior Independent Director, or to Chair a sub-committee in the future.
The CAA is seeking a non-executive Board Member to join its Board. The successful candidate, through their membership of the Board, will provide challenge and support to a wide variety of management and operational issues and contribute to the effective strategic and operational leadership of the CAA.
As a non-executive Board member your key responsibilities will be to:
- Be an active and fully engaged member of the CAA Board, ensuring that the CAA maintains excellence in its vital day-to-day responsibilities, whilst also setting the organisation for the future.
- Provide independent and constructive oversight, challenge and, where appropriate, assurance to the work of the CAA, to help ensure that the CAA delivers its strategic objectives and retains the trust and confidence of all its stakeholders, including consumers.
- Contribute effectively to discussions on the leadership and performance of the business at the CAA Board and non-executive meetings.
- Engage with stakeholders to increase Board and NED internal and external visibility.
- Participate in CAA Regulation 6 review panels when requested.
Introduction from the Minister
Dear Applicant,
Thank you for your interest in being a non-executive director on the Board of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).
This is an important time for the Department for Transport. We are prioritising investments in infrastructure and public transport to improve journeys, enhance connectivity, drive economic growth, and ensure a fairer distribution of opportunities across the country. Our mission is delivering a transport system that works for everyone, fostering equality and inclusivity in every community.
We are recruiting for one non-executive director to join our team on the Board of the CAA. The CAA is the United Kingdom’s independent aviation and aerospace regulator for airspace, consumer rights, economic regulation, safety, security compliance and spaceflight. Further details about the CAA are in its 2024/25 Annual Report. The appointee will contribute to the CAA’s direction by providing constructive challenge to the CAA’s executive team to help ensure the CAA delivers its strategic objectives, drawing on consumer experience where appropriate, and taking part in a programme to engage with specific stakeholders to increase the CAA’s visibility.
We strongly welcome applications from all backgrounds. As part of the Department’s commitment to diversity, we believe our public appointments should reflect our customers - the travelling public – who come from all walks of life and have different experiences. We very much welcome fresh talent, expertise, and perspectives, to help us better understand the needs of the communities we serve and support better decision making for all. This includes people who have never applied for a public appointment – but could bring new ideas, insights and energy.
If you are interested in the role and work of the CAA, I would like to encourage you to apply.
Our dedicated DfT Public Appointments Team would be happy to talk through the process and answer your questions.
Rt Hon Heidi Alexander MP
Secretary of State for Transport
Introduction from the Chair
The Civil Aviation Authority has a vital public service role, promoting the safety, security, and consumer interests of those who fly, whilst also protecting those on the ground underneath. We also have a vital role in enabling the air and space aerospace sectors, playing our part in promoting economic growth and helping ensure that the UK continues to be a global leader in aerospace.
These are exciting but exceptionally challenging times: we need to ensure that the existing air and space sector continues to be safe, secure and effective; we must chart a course to environmentally sustainable aviation; we need to modernise UK airspace; we need to ensure that UK aerospace continues to thrive, nationally and internationally, outside the EU; we need to create the right environment for new technologies, including through our role as the UK’s Space regulator; we need to do much more to promote growth, innovation, STEM, and diversity in aerospace; and we must constantly do more and better for consumers, not least those with accessibility needs.
We also must ensure that the CAA’s People Strategy delivers to this ambitious agenda, combined with first-rate corporate governance and the right organisational design.
The CAA Board ensures that we maintain excellence in our day-to-day responsibilities, whilst setting our organisation for the future. Our non-executive directors are at the heart of the Board’s work, providing vital insight, guidance, challenge and support, drawing on their experiences from a wide variety of sectors and organisations. In recruiting a new non-executive director to the Board, I’m excited by the opportunity to be able to work with a great individual who will add to the skills, experience and diversity that the Board needs to define and deliver the CAA of the future. I very much look forward to meeting you.
Sir Stephen Hillier
Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority
Appointment description
Aviation is in exciting but exceptionally challenging times: the CAA must be relentlessly effective in its responsibilities for safety, security and consumer interests; it is helping chart a course to environmentally sustainable aviation; it needs to ensure that UK aerospace continues to thrive outside the EU; it’s creating the right environment for new technologies, including through the CAA’s relatively new role as the UK’s Space regulator; it’s doing much more to promote growth, innovation, STEM, and diversity in air and space and to develop further its ability to match consumers expectations, achieving all this through its people and creating a culture that enables them to thrive.
The CAA’s role as a regulator, enabler, influencer and strategic partner has never been more important. As a non-executive director, you will know what a pivotal role you, as an individual, and your peers will play. The challenges and opportunities are significant. Being excited by these challenges, the CAA expect the successful applicant to be much more than a leading non-executive director. The senior team strive to lead by example, actively listening, supporting, engaging, and championing the development of diversity and inclusion at the CAA.
Your positive influence will spread across the organisation. Your high emotional intelligence and dexterity will be prominent when you demonstrate living the CAA’s values and professionally representing what the CAA stands for. Taking the whole CAA with you, you will live and breathe the CAA’s vision that features the CAA’s core work in safety, security and consumer protection, whilst also embracing new technology, space and sustainability.
Organisation description
The CAA is the UK’s civil aviation and space regulator. Recognised as a world leader in its field, the CAA is at the cutting edge of the exciting and ever-changing aviation environment. Never standing still, the CAA’s work includes activities such as:
- Managing safety and security risks, safeguarding passengers and the general public;
- Driving world class change;
- Minimising the environmental impact of aviation on local communities;
- Running the ATOL holiday financial protection scheme; and
- Helping innovators to deliver the future of aviation.
Thanks to the efforts of the CAA’s organisation and its people, consumers are safe, secure and have choice, value for money and protection when they fly. As part of the CAA’s team, you could help to deliver this vision and be part of something great. In return, you can expect to feel welcome and to have your voice heard.
The CAA is a public corporation, established by Parliament in 1972 as an independent aviation regulator. The UK Government normally requires that the costs are fully covered by charges to those to whom the CAA provides a service or regulates.