NT Director-General

Dame Helen Frances Ghosh DCB is to be the next Director-General of The National Trust. The current DG is Dame Fiona Reynolds DBE.

She is currently the Permanent Secretary of the Home Office, having moved from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs at the end of 2010.

At the time of her appointment at Defra, she was the only female permanent secretary to head a major department of HM Government.

Dame Helen was born in Farnborough, Hampshire in 1956; educated at Farnborough Hill Convent, St Hugh's College, Oxford and Hertford College, Oxford; married with one daughter and one son.

She rejoined the Cabinet Office in 2001, as Head of Central Secretariat and, in 2003, became Director General for Corporate Services at HM Revenue & Customs, where she played an important part in the transformation programme merging the Inland Revenue and Customs & Excise to form the new department.

Ghosh was appointed Permanent Secretary at Defra in 2005. She replaced Sir David Normington as Permanent Secretary at the Home Office in 2011.

She was appointed Dame Commander of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath (DCB) in the Queen's Birthday Honours list in 2008.