About the job

Job summary

OfS pay band 12: £91,697 + £12,000 additional allowance + London weighting (if applicable) £3,566

The OfS is the statutory regulator for higher education in England. This is an exciting time to join a rapidly transforming organisation that works to ensure that every student, whatever their background, has a fulfilling experience of higher education that enriches their lives and careers. We do so by regulating the higher education providers on our register to make sure they are delivering high quality courses and positive outcomes for their students; where they are not, we take action. The higher education sector in England is complex and diverse and the OfS’s approach to regulation recognises this. Our new strategy signals a shift from an organisation in a start-up phase to an established regulator that understands its regulatory tools and how best to use them to shape incentives across the sector we regulate.

Job description

We are now seeking an Assistant Head of Legal to lead on provision of legal advice and support for a broad range of legal matters relevant to the OfS’s functions. The nature of our work provides genuine intellectual stimulation, with the nature of the OfS’s relative youth as a regulator providing significant exposure to novel and complex legal matters which enable us to drive positive outcomes for students throughout England. You will work across the full range of the OfS’s remit to provide the organisation with robust and helpful legal advice to support effective decision making across all the tools we have at our disposal. You will also have a key leadership role within the legal function, supporting the Head of Legal Services across a range of projects and providing management oversight to a number of our legal team.

Person specification

The successful candidate will have significant legal experience dealing with many legal practice areas related to the application of UK public and regulatory law along with a successful track record as a leader of people and able to demonstrate an ability to build, develop and deliver exceptional results through teams across an organisation. You will be highly effective at engaging and influencing with internal stakeholders at the most senior levels. You will be comfortable making complex risk-based decisions, often in novel circumstances, and will be able to quickly grasp the regulatory and legal frameworks under which the OfS carries out its duties. How we do things is as important to us as what we do and your approach will be underpinned by our values of Ambition, Openness, Learning and Diversity.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £91,697, Office for Students contributes £24,758 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

Things you need to know

Selection process details

Your application will be assessed against criteria in the Person Specification and the requirements for the post. It is important that you provide as much detail as possible and provide specific and detailed examples to demonstrate how you meet each criterion (including what you did to achieve a specific result).

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check. People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window). The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.