About the job

Job summary

Please refer to Job Description

Job description

We encourage applications from people from all backgrounds and aim to have a workforce that represents the wider society that we serve. We pride ourselves on being an employer of choice. We champion diversity, inclusion and wellbeing and aim to create a workplace where everyone feels valued and a sense of belonging. To find out more about how we do this visit: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-justice/about/equality-and-diversity.

Overview 

This is an exciting opportunity to help lead and shape the future of the Planning and Operational Support (POpS) team at the Judicial College. We are looking to recruit a self-motivated, enthusiastic and flexible individual with strong leadership and operational delivery skills to lead a team in delivering the judicial training programme. 

This is a senior position and will work closely with all parties who contribute to the creation and delivery of the judicial training programme, including colleagues within the Judicial College, the judicial training team and stakeholders across the Judicial Office, MoJ and HMCTS. 

The role would suit someone with leadership, stakeholder relations, operational and change management experience looking for a challenging role. 

The Judicial College 

Judicial College is part of the Judicial Office (JO), an arm’s-length body of the MoJ.  The JO is a unique branch of the Civil Service, independent from Government, dedicated to supporting the judiciary and promoting judicial independence, to maintain confidence in the rule of law. The JO reports to, and is accountable to, the Lady Chief Justice and was set up in 2006 to provide support to her and to the wider judiciary following the Constitutional Reform Act 2005.  In addition, we support, and are accountable to, the Senior President of Tribunals, whose responsibilities extend to Scotland and Northern Ireland.  We support over 22,000 judicial office holders, providing policy, legal and handling advice and operational support. 

The principal role of Judicial College is to support the Lady Chief Justice and the Senior President of Tribunals in fulfilling their responsibilities for the arrangements for training the judiciary in an ever-evolving justice system.  Working with the College Board, the Judicial College supports these senior members of the judiciary in setting the direction for training and ensuring the College has the right support in place to provide advice on the design and delivery of training, innovative digital systems to support delivery and that seminars are well organised. Our purpose is to strengthen the rule of law and improve the administration of justice through delivery of essential training for the judiciary in courts and tribunals, as well as a framework of training for magistrates.  

The Planning and Operational Support team (POpS) is the customer facing hub of the College – we provide the organisational support to judicial training events across the UK.  Our training programme has increased in size from 400 to 2000 seminars during 2023-24 with the responsibility for all magistrates training moving over to the College.  The majority of our training seminars are face-to-face with some digital seminars. 

The POpS team is based over three sites – Loughborough, London and Leeds.  We have a large team of course organisers (Band E/AO) and team leaders (Band D/EO) based across these offices and office managers (Band C/HEO) in three of our sites.  We are looking to recruit a Loughborough based Band B (SEO) manager to lead the tribunals and coroners training programme, help set the future training programme and continue to develop a resilient team to support delivery.  

https://www.linkedin.com/company/judicial-office/ 

Overview of the Role 

At a time of significant investment in judicial recruitment, reform of the Courts and Tribunals, and recovery from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic you will have an opportunity to work as part of the POpS senior management team.  As one of our Senior Planning and Operations Managers you will work closely with your peers to ensure that the College’s current and future training programmes are planned, organised and delivered to schedule, properly resourced and you will have a strong focus on the standard of service provided by your team. 

You will have a specific lead on the tribunals and coroners training programme and you will oversee a team largely based in the Loughborough office to deliver this objective. 

As well as working with your College colleagues, you will build strong working relations working very closely with judicial training leads and their judicial training teams and our wider stakeholders, such as the Judicial Office Business Support Team, HMCTS and Judicial HR, to monitor and manage the training programme.  You will also directly support the Head of Planning and Operational Support in the management of the new and emerging training needs, the budget, deployment of staff resources and continuous improvement.  

Do you have superb planning skills? Are you a proactive and confident leader who enjoys building and motivating a team to deliver? Are you a good communicator able to articulate views, listen to and consider others point of view, stand your ground when necessary and deliver difficult messages professionally? Are you comfortable managing a profile of work at pace which is subject to, at times, necessary variation and change whilst keeping a clear focus on delivery? Are you able to keep multiple parties who depend on the accuracy and completeness of your information up to date and well-informed in what can be a dynamic environment? Do you enjoy reviewing ways of working with a view to improving a service and outcomes? 

If you answered yes to these questions, then this role may be one to consider as we are looking for a strong leader who is a highly-organised planner, with superb team management and communication skills, and a determined eye for delivering the best possible service to be one of our Senior Planning and Operational Managers within POpS.     

This is a full-time role, but we can consider part-time (minimum 0.8 of full time equivalent) or a job share.  The post-holder will be based out of our Loughborough office with some travel expected to the London and Leeds offices. 

Role purpose 

The purpose of the role is to provide strong operational oversight of the judicial training programme, with specific focus on the tribunals and coroners training programme.  You will lead a team of circa 30 in their planning and organisation of both face to face and digital training and ensure that the College delivers a complete and timely training programme to support the Judicial Office mission of ‘Right Judge, Right Place, Right Time’.  You will work with the POpS senior management team to support the planning and delivery of the current and future training programme each year. 

Your key duties will be to: 

• Lead and provide strategic direction and manage the POpS team to organise and assist with the delivery of judicial training.
• Oversee the leadership and management of circa 30 staff to ensure your hierarchy of line managers effectively lead and support their team members to be high performers and satisfied employees.  
• Be an active member of the senior management team, contribute to the leadership and management of the team and the wider Judicial College. 
• Ensure that POpS have the appropriate staff and financial resources to deliver any training required.
• Ensure that the team complies with its responsibilities for course organising and delivers a high standard of service to delegates, the judicial training teams and other stakeholders. 
• Contribute to the monitoring and management of the judicial training budget by overseeing the provision of reporting required from your team to support accurate forecasting of spend, reporting on risks and pressures and ensuring value for money.  Prepare business cases for any new funding required in year.
• Ensure your team takes appropriate action in response to new training needs throughout the year by working closely with the Central Planning Team to understand the operational impacts of judicial recruitment.
• Develop and facilitate a continuous improvement plan to assist POpS to be a high-performing customer service delivery unit.
• Work in partnership with the Judicial Education Team and Digital Training Team in the College to support and help implement digital ways of working (e.g. e-learning, webinars).
• Advise and support the Directors of Training, College Board and judicial training committees when required on operational matters and plans for training at their regular meetings and in the intervals in between if required so that decisions are made with awareness of the relevant information and issues.
• Develop and maintain strong working relations between the judiciary and your team particularly jurisdictional training leads and their teams of judicial trainers and facilitators to ensure the highest standard of customer service is provided by the Judicial College. 

The role reports to the G7 Head of Planning and Operational support and will work closely with the G6 Head of Planning, Operations and Systems. 

Essential skills and experience

The successful candidate will be able to demonstrate:

• Proven experience in planning a sizeable schedule of operational delivery with the ability to make effective decisions on prioritisation, how to make best use of your resources to achieve both short- and long-term results.
• A strong track record in leading a team across different grades to deliver a programme of work at pace.
• A history of managing excellent customer/stakeholder relations.
• Excellent leadership skills including the ability to manage through change and motivate teams and build capability and resilience.
• Demonstrable experience of identifying operational efficiencies in existing ways of working to improve a service.
• The ability to build effective working relationships with a range of internal and external stakeholders including our customer base, the judiciary.
• The ability to provide clear evidenced briefing in both written and oral formats to senior managers and the judiciary on areas where there are a range of views.

Desirable:

• Experience of managing teams based across geographically dispersed sites.

Working hours 

We operate a flexible working policy, including remote working. This post will be based from our Loughborough office with travel to London and Leeds where required.  

Person specification

Please refer to Job Description

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £39,868, Ministry of Justice contributes £10,804 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

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours.https://justicejobs.tal.net/vx/candidate/cms/About%20the%20MOJ

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 counter-terrorist 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.