Philip Lionel Burton

Philip Lionel Burton (2 April 1914 – 14 June 1996) was Head of the Civil Service Pay Research Unit between 1963 and 1971. He was appointed CBE in 1972 and was subsequently an adviser to Governments at home and overseas on pay related issues.

Life Philip Lionel Burton was born at Elstree on 2 April 1914 and educated at Bedford Modern School. the first person to be recruited since the end of the Great War. and was demobilised with the rank of lieutenant-colonel.

After the war, Burton continued his career with the War Office in West Africa, Northern Command and the Suez Canal Zone before joining the Civil Service Pay Research Unit as Commanding Officer in 1957. He was back at the War Office between 1960 and 1963 before returning to the Civil Service Pay Research Unit as Director. At this point ‘he made civil service history by being the first non-graduate to be up-graded from the Executive side to the Administrative side’, a promotion that had to be approved by the then Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan. In 1971 he took early retirement was subsequently an adviser to Governments at home and overseas on pay related issues.

Burton was appointed CBE in 1972 although not even his best friends knew of the honour until they attended his funeral. Burton died on 14 June 1996.