About the job

Job summary

Showcase your media relations expertise in one of the highest-profile government departments.

The Home Office is at the heart of UK life. Overseeing a wide array of areas impacting on the safety and economic prosperity of the country and our population, we are tasked with handling crime, counterterrorism, drugs policy, and issues relating to immigration and passports. We also manage fire services and the work of the police, so our remit is both far-reaching and deeply interesting.

As a member of our Communications team, you will find a career-defining challenge. Taking ownership of three key areas – media relations, visits and events, and external affairs – you will become a trusted advisor to the Home Secretary, Ministers, numerous Permanent Secretaries and other senior leaders within the department. As the most senior media relations professional within the department, you will deal with high-profile policy and corporate issues relating to both national and international affairs, forming great working relationships with journalists, partners and social media influencers to ensure the right messages are reaching the right audiences.

This is a newly-created role, so the scope to develop the role is exponential. Your key mission will be to uphold the public profile of the Home Office, but how you do that will be multi-faceted. From defining our media relations strategy via proactive campaigns, through to providing reactive crisis management, you will work quickly to handle issues as they emerge. With a focus on protecting the reputation of one of the UK Government’s most well-known departments, you will ensure we are constantly improving our broadcast and digital news capabilities, and you will be constantly assessing how we can best use emerging technology to enhance the effectiveness of your key areas.

On a day-to-day basis, you will ensure your team are collaborating both internally and with media operations colleagues in order to deliver joined-up results. You will therefore be keen to develop the skills of those around you and ensure they are benefiting from a supportive and inspirational working environment. As we offer a 24/7 media response operation and working hours news desk function, you will lead by example in delivering a dynamic and forward thinking service.

Job description

To be equal to this challenge, you will be a confident strategic advisor with the capacity to work with the most senior level stakeholders and partners. With significant media-facing experience, you will have a background in shaping communication campaigns, and your crisis response capabilities will be second-to-none. With exceptional communication, influencing and negotiating skills, you will be a natural leader who is passionate about building relationships with both internal and external partners.

In turn, we can offer you a fulfilling career prospect, further enhanced by a competitive benefits package that includes generous annual leave, and access to a desirable contributory pension.

Key responsibilities include:

• Setting the overall Home Office media relations strategy, both in support of proactive campaigns set out in the communications strategy and on a reactive basis to manage unplanned or emerging issues, including moments of crisis, affecting Home Office interests and reputation.
• Constantly improving Home Office broadcast and digital news capability, impact and outcomes in line with campaign priorities.
• Harnessing emerging technology to improve efficiency, productivity and evidence of impact of the news, visits & events, and external affairs functions.
• Ensuring that the visits & events and external affairs teams operate under a shared set of objectives and common reporting measures – closely aligned with the media operation – in support of the value offer set out in the communications strategy.
• Across each of the three areas of responsibility, operating an effective workforce plan with recruitment, retention and skills development arrangements. Supporting a culture of collaboration, innovation and skills sharing within the directorate and wider department through secondments and upskilling.
• Maintaining SLAs for the department’s 24/7 media response operation and working hours newsdesk function. Reviewing and streamlining processes and driving innovation.
• Being a trusted senior adviser directly to ministers, special advisers and senior officials on matters of acute reputational and operational sensitivity – both in relation to government policy and corporate Home Office issues. When deputising for the Director of Communications at departmental Executive Committee and cross-government Directors of Communications meetings, bringing authority and a cross-functional perspective to professional communications advice and challenge.
• Building and maintaining excellent relationships with home affairs and Lobby journalists and staying abreast of wider opportunities to work with social media influencers.

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:

• An expert senior strategic adviser - You should be capable of influencing and advising ministers and senior officials, across government and externally, to ensure the audience voice is properly heard and a whole system approach is in place to meet communications objectives.
• Crisis response - You will have experience leading a team – including with substantial media facing experience – in a crisis, and with the personal resilience to provide direction and support over a sustained period.
• Setting strategic direction - You will be expected to help to design and evolve campaigns as part of the refreshed departmental communications strategy for 2024/25 and provide a fresh approach to connecting the news, external affairs and visits functions.
• Building capability - You will support and promote learning and development, effective performance management, staff retention and recruitment of diverse talent. You will support the director’s continuous improvement projects across GCS linked to the Home Office’s role as a pathfinder department for GCS programmes.
• Ownership of culture, behaviour, and values - Set through your own conduct and leadership the culture of the communications function and our role in supporting the Home Office collaborative, compassionate, courageous and respectful values. You will adhere to GCS propriety and ethics standards.

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 Friday 9th February 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.