Interview: Mark Gifford, National Citizen Service chief executive

Last March, Mark Gifford took over from Michael Lynas as chief executive of the National Citizen Service (NCS) Trust, the government’s flagship youth social action programme for 15- and 16-year-olds. By his own admission, the appointment from a senior management position at Waitrose “raised eyebrows”. Gifford, a Mancunian, says the move brought together his personal interests – he was chair of governors in schools in Oldham and Rochdale – with a strong track-record in managing organisational change.

How has NCS adapted during the pandemic and what are the plans for the 2021 programme?

We had to be agile and creative to pivot what we did. Action groups worked with schools and colleges to help bring our network to them and a lot of work was done digitally, and young people volunteered in food banks and cleaned beaches.

Covid changed how we think about delivering our provision: NCS is known for the residential programme [which wasn’t possible in 2020] but there’s a lot more that we do. We hope to be able to offer a residential programme this year but it could be pushed back to late summer.

Our residential offering will remain important but so too is our non-residential activity.

Was it a straightforward process to change the way you worked with NCS delivery organisations?

There were bumps along the way and at the start it was challenging for staff.

A lot of the organisations had a business model based on a residential programme in the summer. We account for 75 per cent of some charities’ income so we had to work hard on asking what we can do to help. What was amazing was that I asked 120 organisations to change their delivery contracts and they said “yes, we can do that”.

For example, we’re one of the biggest contracts that the Youth Hostelling Association have so we asked to use their premises for daily activities.

What impact did the pandemic have on the number of young people NCS worked with?

In a normal year, we’d be having 100,000 young people on residentials. We had 91,000 young people doing socially distanced activities with NCS in 2020, and 300,000 young people accessed virtual programmes.

Young people undertook 200,000 hours of volunteering through NCS last August.

The scheme has struggled to hit its participation targets. Are you confident it will in the future?

An act of parliament requires us to grow and it is built into contracts. But the way we measure ourselves is more nuanced than that.

NCS allowed a narrative to emerge about being a middle-class holiday, but many young people from disadvantaged groups participate in the universal programme.

The trust did not do a good enough job on building a relationship with the youth sector and in allowing a narrative to emerge that NCS takes all the money and is overly focused on growth. I still have data on growth but we are increasingly moving towards measuring the long-term impact.

A recent report suggested NCS could help recover from the pandemic by offering year-round involvement in social action similar to the Youth Corps in the US. Is that something you support?

We would see this type of Youth Corps offering as being something that could help “Build Back Britain” in the aftermath of restrictions being lifted. Young people will be facing the future concerned about their disrupted education and an uncertain job market. Being able to get real life experience could make all the difference to them as the country gets back on its feet, helping them to be world- and work-ready.

However, as we all emerge from the shadow of the pandemic, we would expect to carry on this offering, as another part of a transformed NCS that exists to nurture future generations of national citizens.

How have you approached running a charitable trust and how does it compare with retail?

At John Lewis I built third-party operations for the shops and picking services. In the supermarket sector margins are quite low and the shelf life of products short – you have to be “on it” in terms of your supply chain. When Covid happened I employed skills from there to ask: what’s our unique selling point, how can we control costs and what’s our strategy?

A lot of the NCS role was about giving strong operational leadership and helping manage change. I know a lot about managing change, unleashing potential and controlling costs so this played to my strengths.

The trust has been criticised for the amount of funding it has received. Can you understand that?

We’ve not had a good reputation. I have reduced costs by 25 per cent by ending the lease of a large headquarters in West Kensington and moving to a smaller office. It is a precursor to not having a London HQ and moving to a smaller one in the North. All the money we get goes to the frontline.

For every £1 spent on NCS, there is a return of £3.49 per person, but we need to grow that further. In this era, we need to justify to taxpayers what more we can get [out of investment]; and I want to double it over the next three years.

Mark Gifford CV

• March 2020 – present: Chief executive, National Citizen Service Trust
• 2017 – 2020 – Head of shop trade, Waitrose
• 2015 – 2017: Director of retail operations (North), Waitrose
• 2014 – 2015: Head of retail operations, Waitrose
• 2012 – 2014: Head of partnership assurance, Waitrose
• 2009 – 2012: Registrar, John Lewis & Partners
• 2004 – 2009: Operations manager selling, John Lewis & Partners