About the job

Job summary

Home Office Property Services (HOPS) are responsible for providing expert property services to the department. The estate comprises of office, warehouse, residential, detention and public access properties.

Our property teams work with many stakeholders within the department, across Government and with a range of external suppliers. Alongside the provision of accommodation for staff and contractors, our teams manage the budget (c.£220m p.a) for the estate and oversee a portfolio of change and improvement projects. 

This role leads the Property Strategy & Planning function across the department, acting as the ‘intelligent client’ to ensure that evolving business needs are well understood and supported with innovative and affordable delivery plans.

As well as the two Strategy & Planning teams (geographically covering the north and south) the post-holder will be responsible for the Sustainability & Transformation team, the Fire, Health & Safety team and the central PMO team who oversee resources (money and people), data, systems, communications and engagement across HOPS.

The role will appeal to those who would like experience of leading an impactful and large property function within government: bringing property knowledge and expertise to bear on estate matters to help the department fulfil its mission and key priorities. Property experience is essential; beyond that the successful candidate will demonstrate excellent Leadership, Delivery and Stakeholder Management skills.

HOPS is a friendly and forward-looking team that thrives on challenges. The successful applicant will be given support and guidance to hit the ground running.

Job description

Key responsibilities 

Our strategy is to secure a smaller, better and greener estate to support the important work of the department. The applicant will be supported to lead across a range of high-profile workstreams, including:

• Departmental Estate Strategy: Developing regional and national strategies that meet organisational and government objectives. Ensuring that the estate is well utilised, sufficiently flexible to meet changing demands and ensuring that the quality of our estate is continually improving, recognising that it plays an increasingly important role in employee wellbeing, recruitment and retention. The strategies must support the different ways in which staff work across the organisation and increase the range and quality of the estate outside of London and the Southeast.
• Fire Health and Safety: leading a team of fire, health and safety professionals as they deliver an ambitious transformation programme to improve compliance and culture, ensuring that everyone working in the department returns home safely at the end of their working day.
• People, Finance and Efficiency: Ensuring that the estates BAU (c.£220m p.a.) and change budgets are forecast and prioritised effectively, leveraging opportunities to exploit lease events. Overseeing the People functions of the team including workforce planning, recruitment, improving professional standards and transforming the Home Office property function by delivering the new operating model.
• Programme Management Office: Development of the annual c.£20m budget for change projects across the estate and management of the forward planning process for statutory maintenance.

Additionally, the post-holder will:

• Act as a visible and effective leader across Home Office Property Services, the Directorate (Security, Estates & Information), the DG area (Corporate & Delivery) and the wider Government Property profession.
• Work alongside and complement the other property Deputy Director leading on Facilities management and Project Delivery.
• Be responsible for leading, maintaining and generating key relationships across the Department, Other Government Departments, supply chains and industry.
• Build capability within the team through effective review of roles and the development of appropriate training and workforce plans. 
• Ensure internal governance procedures are in place for procuring and authorising spend to ensure both value for money and appropriate contract delivery.

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:

• A property leader with experience of driving alignment between an organisation’s strategic priorities and its property strategy and property transformation plans.
• Excellent communications, influencing and stakeholder management skills.
• Able to manage multiple tasks with competing timelines and deliverables; proven effectiveness and interest in leading and coordinating colleagues from across various disciplines in a complex organisation.

Desirable Criteria  

• Experience of overseeing an organisation’s property budget, ensuring the right controls are in place to ensure the expenditure is well used, targeted on priority areas and represents value for money.
• Degree level or equivalent qualification in a property-related discipline.
• Member of a relevant professional body.

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

Please follow the Job Advert instructions on the Civil Service Jobs website to apply online, no later than 23:55hrs on Tuesday 23rd July 2024.

Provide some basic personal information;

1. 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;
2. 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.
3. Diversity Monitoring - 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 characteristics, you will have the option to select 'prefer not to say'. For more information, please see Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy: 2022 to 2025 (HTML) - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

It is essential that in your written application you give evidence, using examples, of proven experience. These responses will be developed and discussed with candidates invited for interview. Failure to submit both a CV and Supporting Statement will mean the panel only have limited information on which to assess your application against the 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.