About the job

Job summary

Safer Greener Buildings (SGB), a unit of DLUHC, started work 5 years ago to make buildings safer following the Grenfell Tower fire. Since Grenfell, the extent of the challenge and nature of the work needed has become clear, and many thousands of buildings require remediation.  

The Enforcement and Freeholder Strategy division exists to drive remediation of buildings with unsafe cladding, by ensuring building owners are incentivised to access government funding, and regulators take enforcement action where remediation stalls unnecessarily.    

The division encompasses five teams: 

• Enforcement strategy: drives enforcement action so that unwilling building owners are incentivised or compelled to do the work required to make their buildings safe.  
• Freeholder strategy: drives action to incentivise building owners to assess their stock, and where unsafe cladding is identified enter the government remediation funds and remediate their buildings at pace.  
• Local Regulator Strategy: works with the department’s remediation schemes to escalate the highest risk cases to regulators for action and supports local regulators in developing and implementing local enforcement strategy.  
• Enforcement funding strategy. The team have an annual budget of c.£10m to deploy to support regulators in achieving remediation enforcement outcomes. The enforcement strategy is currently in development and the DD will be responsible for ensuring the strategy is evidence based, and overseen through strong governance, and delivers value for money. 
• Complex cases: the Department is increasingly dealing directly with complex cases of individual buildings with safety issues across England. These include emergency evacuations (‘decants’), particularly unsafe buildings, buildings which raise novel policy issues, and buildings that MPs write to us about.  

The Deputy Director will report into the Portfolio Director and is expected to manage a team of approximately 28 FTEs on a day-to-day basis whilst also providing support, guidance and coaching. They will promote both effective individual, team and group performance.   

Job description

Key accountabilities 

• Set the strategy and delivery model for the enforcement and freeholder portfolio , and engage with senior industry stakeholders to enable the strategy and delivery model

• Run processes needed to deliver the strategy and funding to achieve strategic objectives  

• Manage development of team through training and actionable feedback

• Work closely with regulators and have clear oversight of urgent cases, in the event that  leaseholders need to be evacuated from their homes. 

• Lead a case work team for complex cases that require liaising with regulators to support enforcement and remediation outcomes

• A key element to the role is to be able to respond quickly and efficiently in emergencies. This can sometimes require the post holder at immediate notice, outside of regular working hours.

The person

You will be an experienced and inclusive leader, able to empower, develop and inspire your teams to deliver, including under pressure. You will need to be confident in coaching your team to deliver this work and be able to provide them with strategic leadership and the support they need from you as a senior leader.

You will be comfortable working at pace and responding flexibly to change, but also able to plan and lead teams to deliver key monthly tasks.

You will have excellent written, verbal and interpersonal skills in order to liaise at all levels of the organisation and with external bodies. 

You will need to have strong personal resilience to be able to think and act quickly and calmly under pressure during a crisis, and to look out for the wellbeing of your team.

You will need to be able to engage effectively across boundaries at a senior level and have proven and credible experience working with Ministers or equivalent senior stakeholders.

Regular travel to London will be required to facilitate team and ministerial meetings.

We particularly encourage applications from those of an ethnic minority background and those with disabilities, as well as those based in locations outside of London, who are underrepresented at this level in DLUHC.

As one of the Department’s senior leaders, you will also be a visible role model for the Civil Service leadership behaviours. These can be found in the Civil Service Leadership Statement which is available here.   

Person specification

Essential criteria 

You will be an experienced and visible leader, able to engage and motivate a team working under pressure and at pace, and to actively contribute to the wider leadership agenda of the Directorate and Department. This will require skills in galvanising peers as well as direct reports.  

You will be comfortable working at pace and responding flexibly to change, but also able to plan, set strategies and lead teams to deliver key monthly tasks.  

You will be an effective communicator, someone who can draw insights from data and bring complex concepts to life for non-experts.  

You will be comfortable working with data and evidence to set policy and strategy 

You will be effective at working with and delivering through stakeholders. 

Desirable Criteria: 

Enforcement policy or delivery experience, including casework management 

Experience working with and influencing regulators 

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £75,000, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities contributes £20,250 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

How to apply
Please click the Be Applied link to provide the required information and complete your application through the Be Applied website by 23:55 on Sunday 7th January 2024.

You will be asked to enter some personal details, upload your CV and to provide your responses to the role’s advertised essential criteria.​

When prompted to upload your CV, please upload a single document consisting of: ​

• a CV (including the names of 2 referees and your current remuneration) setting out your career history, with key responsibilities, achievements and your relevant qualifications. Please ensure you have provided reasons for any gaps within the last two years. ​
• a statement of suitability explaining how your personal skills, qualities and experience provide evidence of your suitability for the role, with particular reference to the essential criteria provided in the person specification. (max. 2 pages)​

Please remember to save these two items in one document.​

Please note that only completed applications through the Be Applied route will be considered and that any further progress updates will be sent through Be Applied.

The hiring manager, Ben Llewellyn, would be happy to have informal discussions with candidates who would like further information about the role before submitting an application. If interested, please contact scs.recruitment@levellingup.gov.uk 

The selection panel will be made up of:

• Ben Llewellyn, Director, Shielding
• Two additional panel members TBC

Additionally, the panel will be joined by one of our staff representatives from a pool of volunteers as part of our commitments to diversity and inclusion.

Selection process and assessments

Candidates that are shortlisted may be invited to attend a staff engagement panel. 

At DLUHC we hold staff engagement panels as an integral part of the recruitment process for Senior Civil Servants (SCS) – they are designed to help us build up a rounded picture of each candidate and give us an insight into how you might engage and interact with your team should you be successful. The purpose of the session is to help us assess your engagement and communication skills and is not about testing your subject knowledge or expertise for this particular role. Feedback from the session is passed onto the selection panel for consideration alongside the final interview.

Candidates may also be invited to a meeting with a Minister or the Secretary of State, and/or other senior stakeholders. This is not a formal part of the selection process but an informal chance for candidates to find out more about the role and the organisation.

Shortlisted candidates will also be invited to give a short presentation or complete an exercise at the beginning of their final interview. Further details will be provided to shortlisted candidates when invited to interview. 

All of the evidence presented as part of the process will be considered in the final assessment.

Security Clearance

All DLUHC colleagues must meet the Baseline Personnel Security Standard. This is a series of basic security checks to confirm identity and employment history.

In addition to the BPSS, the level of security clearance required for this role is Security Check (SC) and the process can take up to 8 weeks to complete. For more details of vetting levels and requirements please refer to the Cabinet Office HMG Personnel Security Controls.

Salary

For external appointments, remuneration for this role will be circa £75,000 pa plus a bonus opportunity depending on performance (within the normal Civil Service pay arrangements) and attractive pension.​

For existing civil servants, the usual policy on level transfer and promotion will apply and is non-negotiable. If appointed on promotion you would get the higher of 10% uplift or the new minimum for Deputy Director.​​

Future pay awards will normally be made in line with current SCS performance-related pay arrangements.

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

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check. Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window).

See our vetting charter (opens in a new window). 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. The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.