About the job

Job summary

Are you a confident leader who has the ability to translate strategy into action?

DWP as a government department touches on a wide range of policy and public services. With a growing number of inquiries having relevance to the department, DWP established a Public Inquires team in Summer 2022 as a direct response to the Covid Inquiry. The team has provided comprehensive evidence of DWP’s response and supported relevant witnesses in evidence sessions. As the inquiry shifts its focus on to the Governments economic response the focus on DWP will grow and leading DWP though this period is the main focus of this role. 

In establishing the team, we have identified a range of other inquiries where DWP has an interest and have brought our approach to these together under this role and team. This is a high-profile role with considerable engagement with ministers and our most senior officials. You will have to represent the whole department, so an understanding of its business is critical. All while leading a team, implementing an IT project and managing the contract with our legal team. 

Find out more about DWP from our colleagues.

Job description

Key responsibilities are:

• Lead and co-ordinate the delivery of DWP’s obligations to Public Inquiries, with initial focus on the Covid and Horizon Inquiries
• Act as the primary advisor and subject matter expert for the Secretary of State, Permanent Secretary and Non-Executive Directors on all public inquiry matters
• Engage with senior colleagues across Government to ensure common issues are identified and rectified, and appropriate resource shared
• Engage with internal and external stakeholders to identify and safeguard evidence relevant to the Inquiry, ensuring that supporting technology is effective
• Support stakeholders and witnesses, including Ministers and senior stakeholders, to prepare evidence and statements for inquiries
• Work closely with legal colleagues, including DWP’s King’s Counsel and the Government Legal Department, to ensure that legal obligations are met and risks managed
• Work with DWP subject matter experts to interpret large amounts of evidence to maintain a coherent narrative across DWP’s response to the pandemic
• Act as the primary interface between DWP, Ministers and Legal colleagues to promote a co-ordinated approach;
• Ensure that emerging findings and lessons learned are shared with relevant parts of DWP and acted upon to drive increased resilience;
• Lead the DWP Inquiry response team, including supporting development and maintaining a focus on wellbeing and inclusion
• Ensure resources are effectively deployed with allocated budget (£5million) spend achieving value for money

Person specification

Essential Criteria:

• Working in a senior role on a major Inquiry preferably with experience of leading a cross-cutting incident response
• Working extensively in a legal environment, ensuring that potential issues are identified, appropriate guidance sought, and justifiable decisions made
• Working across organisational boundaries and building an effective senior network of partnerships to work collaboratively
• Confident leadership, with the ability to implement and translate strategy into action, developing new approaches and setting a clear and compelling vision, that their teams can align behind to deliver
• A passion for building high performing teams, creating an inclusive and collaborative learning culture which values diversity and encourages openness, approachability, and sensitivity.
• Excellent communication and influencing skills, including strong experience of working with high profile senior stakeholders across multiple complex organisations

Benefits

• Learning and development tailored to your role
• An environment with flexible working options
• A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
• A Civil Service pension with an average employer contribution of 27%

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.

To apply for this post, you will need to complete the online application process outlined below:

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;

Three statements (maximum 500 words each) answering the 3 pre-defined questions (below), explaining why you want to work for DWP in this role; how you consider your personal skills, qualities and experience providing evidence of your suitability for the role, with particular reference to the essential criteria in the person specification.

1. Tell us about what steps you take to ensure that large, multi-disciplinary teams are bought into your strategic direction and ambition?
2. How do you gain agreement and co-operation from a diverse set of stakeholders? Tell us about a time when you did this successfully.
3. Describe a time when it has been difficult to find a mutually acceptable resolution to a problem with others. How did you address it?​

This virtual session is an opportunity for you to find out more about the DWP and this role. You'll get the opportunity to hear directly from the vacancy holders, Nicholas Hamer and Tasneem Blondin, who will provide an overview of their roles and hold a Q&A session. Live Event Link

Date: Thursday 18th April 2024

Time: 14:00

To find our more about this role and the application process, please see the candidate pack at the bottom of this advert.

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.