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Emily Miles, Chief Executive

Information about the Food Standards Agency's Chief Executive.

Emily Miles

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Emily Miles has been the Chief Executive Officer of the FSA since September 2019.

Prior to that she was the acting Director-General in charge of EU exit delivery for Defra. She had a number of roles in Defra between 2015 and 2019, including as Group Director of Strategy, and coordinating work on the domestic consequences of EU Exit.

For the previous 15 years she worked largely on home affairs issues, at the Home Office, Downing Street and Cabinet Office. Her roles included:

  • Director of Policing at the Home Office
  • Programme Director for the programme to clear the UK’s historic asylum caseload backlog in the UK Border Agency 
  • Programme Director for the close of the National Policing Improvement Agency and the establishment of the College of Policing 

She was a policy advisor on home affairs to Prime Minister Tony Blair between 2002 and 2005.

She took a career break from 2010 to 2011, in part to spend more time with her two young children. During this period, she was also a Winston Churchill Fellow, travelling to the USA, Canada and India. She published her findings as an InsideOut report, Collaborative Working, for the Institute for Government, where she was a Whitehall Fellow in 2011.

Between 1999 and 2017 she was a trustee for the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, including a stint as vice-chair. She is a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain.

Emily holds a Masters in the international law of armed conflict and international criminal justice from the University of Nottingham, and her first degree was from the University of Cambridge, in English.

Previous roles:

  • Director General, EU Exit Delivery, Defra (April – September 2019)
  • Director, EU Exit Domestic and Constitutional Affairs Directorate, Defra (April 2018 to April 2019)
  • Group Director of Strategy, Defra (November 2015 to April 2018)
  • Director, Projects, Economic and Domestic Secretariat, Cabinet Office (March 2014 to November 2015).