About the job

Job summary

The Home Office Sponsorship Unit owns the relationships with the Department’s Arm’s Length Bodies & Entities and Inquiries. It supports the Home Secretary, Ministers and Permanent Secretaries ensure the Arm’s Length Bodies & Entities and inquiries deliver agreed outcomes, perform effectively and deliver value for money for the public.

The Unit (circa 30 staff) has a national footprint, with staff based in London (2MS), Solihull, Sheffield, Leeds and the Northwest. There is regular engagement with Ministers and Seniors and therefore the post holder must be able to travel regularly.

The role holder must deliver sponsorship capability in line with the Sponsorship Code of Good Practice and assess this through an annual capability maturity assessment.  The post holder must build and maintain effective working relationships between the HO and ALB/Es to facilitate accountable, effective and efficient services to the public.

The post holder is the Senior Responsible Officer for our Public Bodies Review Programme which must find more than 5% of efficiency savings.

The post holder is responsible for the budget allocation (RDEL and CDEL) for all ALB/Es and Inquiries and must ensure effective and accurate financial forecasting.

For Inquiries sponsorship the post holder will provide support and challenge to ensure the efficient and timely delivery of the Department’s public inquiries.  Maintain a centre of excellence to support policy colleagues if new inquiries are set up with learning from effective Terms of Reference, appointment of Chairs, financial modelling and commercial arrangements.

The post holder will have a proven track record of operating successfully in a complex organisation, and the ability to provide expert strategic advice to Ministers and senior officials or their equivalents. They will have well-developed interpersonal skills, combined with the ability to quickly identify key issues and provide challenge, strong political antennae, and resilience.

Job description

Key responsibilities include:

• Effective and impactive leadership of a high performing team to ensure resilience, wellbeing and delivery of outcomes.
• Deliver effective sponsorship to the Departments ALB/Es in line with the Sponsorship Code of Good Practice. Deliver purpose, assurance, value and engagement with colleagues. Work with wider Home Office enablers and Senior Sponsors to deliver relationship management, agreed strategy and objectives, outcome assurance, financial oversight, risk management and governance and accountability.
• Deliver effective sponsorship to Home Office Inquiries, ensuring the independence is respected and appropriate support and oversight of delivery, commercial and financial outcomes and risk management. Ensure the publication processes of inquiries are effectively developed and delivered, including being the Home Office SRO for publications. Work closely with policy colleagues to embed learning and ensure lessons are learnt for any new inquiries.
• Maintain strategic oversight and direction of ALB/Es and Inquiries across the Department, including input from Ministers and the Permanent Secretaries.
• Develop and maintain effective working relationships with CEOs, Chairs and NEDs to work in partnership to deliver assurance, scrutiny and support.
• Work with the ALB/Es, Inquiries and the Home Office to address capability and capacity issues and promote ways of working with OGDs and Cabinet Office. 
• Deliver excellence of the Departments 180 public appointments, including ensuring all stages are as efficient as possible and compliance with the code is achieved. Focus on improving the diversity and range of candidates for public appointments and implement all OCPA recommendations. Work closely with Cabinet Office and No.10 to deliver key appointments.
• Ensure financial and commercial compliance and manage the allocation, forecasting and overall assurance of the ALB/E and inquiries finances.
• As a core member of the Strategy Directorate Senior Leadership Team drive continuous improvement to the Directorate’s corporate culture and ensuring that you embody the Home Office values of diversity and inclusion.

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:

• Excellent leadership skills, including the ability to lead a high-performing team and the ability to demonstrate resilience in a fast-paced and high-pressure environments.
• Strong senior stakeholder management experience, bringing together different perspectives to achieve single outcomes, including providing challenge where required.
• Previous experience in effectively working with Ministers and Senior Officials.
• Acute political antennae and sound judgement with the ability to identify issues to be brought to the attention of Ministers and Permanent Secretaries.
• The ability to communicate complex issues clearly, verbally and in writing, to a wide variety of audiences.
• Excellent organisation and prioritisation skills, with the ability to work effectively across a range of complex areas.
• Excellent financial acumen and the ability to manage complex budgets (RDEL and CDEL).

Desirable Criteria

• Strategic policy thinking and a strong focus on good governance.
• Proven ability to negotiate and work across a range of teams and professions to deliver outcomes.
• Strong collaboration skills are essential to the Unit’s success, a broad range of experience across Home Office, in particular in the Crime and Policing space to effectively build relationships and progress priorities amongst competing equities.

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 2nd  January 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'. See the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy: 2022 to 2025 (HTML) - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) for more information.

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.