Portrait of Mr James Freemantle

Mr James Freemantle

The Director of Resources (D Res) is Air Command’s Senior Finance Officer and Air Force Board member responsible for the £6Bn annual operating and equipment budget, including personal approval of projects up to £400M. D Res is the Permanent Secretary’s representative at Air Command, ensuring propriety and protecting the Accounting Officer’s position. D Res is also Air’s Civilian Workforce advisor, representing the 5,000 Civil servants at the Board, and leads the Finance, Planning and Civilian Workforce teams of c200 staff.

Details

James has spent his career in the Ministry of Defence, starting as a junior analyst in the Defence Science and Technology Labs, and working with several of the Commands. In this role James has led departments in preparation for spending reviews as well as its budgeting process.

Before taking this post, James worked for the Ministry of Defence Chief Operating Officer, leading work on the operating model and transformation. He has worked on several spending reviews from 2010 onwards, initially supporting with policy and output costing support through Dstl, before working as part of the MOD Head Office in 2015, where his focus was on commercialisation and workforce.

Outside of spending reviews James has led force structure force mix studies for Navy Command, and supported the development of the National Shipbuilding Strategy. He also pioneered data visualisation techniques, including network analysis and tree maps to support decision making, leading the UKs contribution to NATO research on the topic. James is CIMA qualified.