About the job

Job summary

As the Deputy Director for the high performing Funding, Strategy & Sponsorship Division, you will provide strong leadership on a range of cross-cutting issues across the programme, working closely with Phase leads, colleagues from across the Department and HM Treasury. You will also oversee the core relationship with HS2 Ltd through ownership of the Development Agreement and key sponsorship policy areas. You will work closely with your fellow Deputy Directors and have regular exposure to our Senior Leadership Team where your views and advice will be relied upon to inform our strategic decision-making.

This role has become available at a critical time for the programme – following the Network North announcement it is now essential that we work closely with all Rail policy areas to ensure that the future HS2 railway line integrates seamlessly and effectively with the conventional rail network.

As this is Government’s largest infrastructure programme, it rightly attracts scrutiny from across all political levels up to and including the Prime Minister. As such, you will lead your team and wider parts of the Group to ensure that we demonstrate an improved culture of cost control and deliver value for money to taxpayers.

You will lead the Group’s General Election planning and as part of that the strategy to inform our next Spending Review bid, which will require forming strong and trusted relationships with senior colleagues across Whitehall. Through your exemplary leadership, you will also lead the next phase of work to re-write the Secretary of State’s Development Agreement with HS2 Ltd, which governs how the railway is delivered and the requirements we consider as essential sponsor priorities.

This is a senior role with a significant leadership component, and you will deploy your expertise in project delivery as well as leading your team and maintaining high performance. The successful post-holder will establish and maintain strong relationships with key stakeholders including HS2 Ltd, DfT Strategic Finance and HM Treasury, utilising strong communication and influencing skills.

Job description

Main responsibilities to include:

• Enhanced cost control – Following the Network North announcement and with renewed political focus on ensuring value for money, you will work closely with senior HS2 Ltd staff, including their Chief Financial Officer and Finance Director, as well as HM Treasury, to provide enhanced financial reporting. This will cover both in-year where we are forecasting more than £7bn of expenditure, over fiscal event periods, as well as the life of the Programme. You will demonstrate a firm grasp of cost drivers, be able to articulate reasons for cost variances and present regularly to senior decision-making bodies such as Sponsor Board.
• Leading on overall HS2 cost narrative – Your team will be responsible for leading on the overall costs position for HS2. You will work closely with Phase teams in High-Speed Rail Group and HS2 Ltd to ensure consistent messaging about HS2’s costs and affordability. You will form strong working relationships with Phase One colleagues to drive a collective culture of robust sponsorship of HS2 Ltd in delivering efficiently the remaining scope, as well as providing strategic advice in helping the latter Phases reach a controlled shut-down following the Network North announcement.
• Preparing for the next Spending Review – You will lead your Division and inform the Group’s strategy over the next 12 months where we expect the existing or future Government to announce a Spending Review. This will be challenging work where you will ensure that the case for HS2 is articulated strongly in order to safeguard the funding required to deliver HS2 on time and within budget. You will draw on your strong relationships across the Group to emphasise the local growth, regeneration and environmental benefits of this transformational Programme.
• Re-defining the contractual relationship between the Secretary of State and HS2 Ltd – You will lead exciting and challenging work to ensure that the Development Agreement which governs our relationship with HS2 Ltd is fit for purpose. This will involve leading your team to identify the right level of “Sponsor Requirements”, ensuring that our incentives of HS2 Ltd are sufficiently robust and ensuring that HS2 Ltd is prioritising on the right outcomes to best deliver the Programme. This will involve making the case to SLT, Ministers and HM Treasury, as well as leading work with HS2 Ltd to redefine the relationship.
• Leadership of several Sponsorship initiatives – These include the regular 6 monthly reports to Parliament where your team will lead work across the Group to ensure that Parliament is regularly apprised of progress with key issues and risks flagged appropriately. The reports have recently attracted interest from HM Treasury and Number 10, and you will skillfully navigate these approvals to deliver within often constrained timescales. You will also lead work on securing cross-DfT agreement to create a Venture Capital Innovation fund – an exciting “spend to save” project that could deliver significant value for money to taxpayers.
• Providing strategic direction for the Group – You will lead and build your Strategy branch of the Division, ensuring that current areas of focus, such as developing Roadmaps on our ambitious decarbonisation and biodiversity objectives, are delivered in a way that helps meet our environmental targets, whilst acknowledging financial trade-offs. You will provide strategic advice and leadership to the rest of the Group on a range of matters including integration with the conventional network. In addition, as part of the Strategy branch you will oversee the briefing & correspondence team, ensuring robust briefing for the Programme for set-piece events such as Public Accounts Committees, as well as providing the briefing on the vast array of correspondence concerning the Programme.

Person specification

You will need to be able to show, through your application, that you have the professional skills, breadth of experience and personal qualities for this post, as well as the leadership skills to succeed at Deputy Director level in the Senior Civil Service.

The successful candidate must be able to demonstrate their capabilities and experience in the following areas:

• An excellent leader of people who improves capability and leads through change to build a diverse, inclusive and multi-disciplinary team.

• An ability to deliver results across organisational boundaries using soft power, influencing and contractual obligations where necessary.

• Financially numerate and commercially savvy to support and challenge HS2 Ltd and its supply chain in delivering to budget, schedule and quality.

• You will be a confident, articulate communicator and a trusted adviser with outstanding interpersonal skills and experience of building effective and influential relationships with senior stakeholders.

Desirable:

• Experience of major project delivery from one or more of infrastructure, ICT, transformation, or weapon systems
• Experience of close working with HMT and/or a Spending Review/fiscal event

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £75,000, Department for Transport 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

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours and Experience.

Application

To apply for this post, you will need to complete the online form. This should be completed no later than 23:55 on Monday 15th January 2024

The application will include:

• A CV setting out your career history, with key responsibilities and achievements. Please ensure you have provided reasons for any gaps within the last two years.
• A Statement of Suitability (no longer than 1000 words) explaining how you consider your personal skills, qualities and experience provide evidence of your suitability for the role, with particular reference to the criteria in the person specification.

Failure to submit both documents will mean the panel only have limited information on which to assess your application against the criteria in the person specification.

As part of the online application process, you will be asked a number of diversity-related questions. If you do not wish to provide a declaration on any of the particular characteristics, you will have the option to select 'prefer not to say’.

All monitoring data will be treated in the strictest confidence and will not be provided to the selection panel. 

Should you encounter any issues with your online application please get in touch with us via scscandidate.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk

Shortlist

Your application will be acknowledged when it is received.  

The panel will select a shortlist of candidates whose applications best demonstrate suitability for the role, by considering the evidence provided against the essential criteria set out in the Person Specification.

Candidates applying under the Disability Confident Scheme who meet the minimum selection criteria in the job specification are guaranteed an interview.

Assessment

Shortlisted candidates may be asked to take part in a series of assessments which could include:

• Staff Engagement Exercise - a presentation and Q&A with a representative staff group from across the DfT.

These assessments will not result in a pass or fail decision. Rather, they are designed to support the panel’s decision making and highlight areas for the panel to explore further at interview.

Interview

You will be asked to attend a panel interview in order to have a more in-depth discussion of your previous experience and professional competence in relation to the criteria set out in the Person Specification.   

The Success Profile Framework will be used to assess and recruit the most suitable candidate.  As well as Experience, we will also be using the following four behaviours will be used at the interview stage:

• Leadership
• Seeing the Big Picture
• Working Together
• Changing and Improving

Further information about Success Profiles can be found here:

Interviews are expected to take place face to face in our London office, all shortlisted candidates will be asked to prepare a 5 minute presentation.

Offer and Feedback

Unfortunately, due to the anticipated number of applicants for this role, we are unable to provide feedback to those not successful at shortlist stage. Candidates who are shortlisted and attend an interview will be offered verbal feedback from a member of the interview panel.

The timeline later in this pack indicates the date by which decisions are expected to be made, all candidates will be advised of the outcome as soon as possible thereafter, and we will advise on any delays.

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.