Sir Christopher Kelly is chair of the Kings Fund and of the TPO Foundation. He has previously been chair of the NSPCC, of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, of Compact Voice and of the Financial Ombudsman Service.

Until 2001 he was a civil servant. He was director of monetary and fiscal policy and director of the Budget and public finances at HM Treasury, where worked from 1970 to 1995. He then became head of the policy group at the then Department of Social Security and in 1997 was appointed permanent secretary to the Department of Health.

Since leaving the civil service in 2001 he has chaired various reviews, including one on paying for the cost of long-term care for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and another on the arrest to sentence part of the criminal justice system which led to the creation of the Office for Criminal Justice Reform. In 2004 he also chaired a serious case review commissioned by the North East Lincolnshire Area Child Protection Committee into aspects of the Ian Huntley case.

Kelly has been a Charity Awards judge since 2007.