About the job

Job summary

The work of The Home Office impacts on everyone in the country. As the government department tasked with economic prosperity and keeping the nation safe, we have an interesting yet vital remit. Our responsibilities extend from keeping the UK safe from organised crime through to identifying and tackling problems associated with drug use, so it is imperative that our colleagues are committed to helping us uphold our far-reaching crime strategies – and it is here that you could find the most fulfilling challenge of your career.

Job description

Working within the Crime Strategy Unit, you will play an integral role in helping us tackle and reduce crime. This ambitious team work collaboratively with a range of government departments plus the Police Force and third sector partners, to ensure that we are delivering a joined-up approach to mitigating the impact of crime. As such, this is a high-profile and high-priority role in which we provide support to the Minister-chaired Crime and Policing Board, across a range of issues such as how we can deter people from a life of crime, how we can better manage prolific offenders, and how effective early interventions can put young people on a law-abiding path.

What this means for you is a great opportunity to develop our focus, approach and investments in relation to tackling crime, with innovative yet achievable measures. As a member of our senior management team, you will lead three teams who are committed to helping us understand how we can reduce and prevent crime, and you will take ownership of developing our crime performance framework. This will include identifying key risks and issues that need to be tackled, and developing pilot studies and the testing approaches needed to handle all types of criminal activities.

Seeing to it that the team have the skills, technology and financial capacity to succeed in their work, you will manage an annual budget of around £300million, ensuring the public purse is being used wisely so that we can keep the population safe. You will also gather insight and build the business cases that we need to secure a future cross-crime spending review bid, so that we can go even further in our work. You will also ensure we are delivering a supportive, inclusive and friendly workplace, and you will be keen to develop the skills of your team.

Leading by example, you will be a dynamic manager with the gravitas to achieve great results and influence key stakeholders from a variety of government departments and external organisations. Passionate about developing a positive organisational culture in which your colleagues are free to explore their most ambitious ideas, you will be a credible leader with great political awareness. As a strategic thinker who believes in underpinning every decision with astute analyses and real-world evidence, you will be keen to utilise data and insight to test solutions to complex problems. Crucially you will have great verbal and written communication skills and you will enjoy working with colleagues and partners at all levels, including Ministers.

In turn we can offer you an exciting opportunity to tackle crime with your bold approaches. With plenty of stimulation and variety in every day, we will support you with ongoing training and development opportunities, and you will receive a generous benefits package. If you are excited about the chance to make the UK safer, then we would be delighted to receive your application.

 

 

Person specification

Essential Criteria:

The successful candidate will need to demonstrate their knowledge, experience, capability and behavioural approach to a high standard against the following key criteria:

• Strategic thinking skills. Able to join the dots across teams and departments in order to deliver real world effect. Also able to appreciate and respond to the political context

• Analytical and evidence-based approach to complex problems with practical solutions. Base policy advice in evidence, proactively seeking new sources of data and constructively testing assumptions.

 

• Credible leadership. Able to build and maintain strong and constructive relationships with a range of cross-government and senior law enforcement stakeholders.

 

• Create and sustain a positive organisational culture in which people feel able to take risks to create innovative policy solutions.

 

• High levels of personal impact and excellent communication skills (written and oral) – including the ability to represent the department with senior stakeholders and interact confidently and credibly with Ministers.

Desirable Criteria:

• Experience working in crime or policing policy or the wider criminal justice system.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £75,000, Home Office 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

• A CV - setting out your career history, highlighting specific responsibilities and achievements that are relevant for this role, including details where budgets and numbers of people managed, relevant achievements in recent posts, together with reasons for any gaps within the last two years;

• . A Statement of Suitability – (limited to 1250 words) explaining how you consider your personal skills, qualities and experience, provide evidence of your suitability for the role, with particular reference to the essential criteria in the person specification.

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

Security

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.