31914 - Senior Policy Advisor

£30,989 - £41,095
1
12 Months
East Midlands, West Midlands
Birmingham , Nottingham
NOTTINGHAM OPG NOTTINGHAM, NG2 1AR, OPG BIRMINGHAM, B1 1TF
SEO
B
Permanent
Full Time, Part Time, Part Time/Job Share, Flexible Working
Operational Delivery

Overview

The Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) is an executive agency of the Ministry of Justice (MoJ).

The role of Senior Policy Adviser is based at the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG). The Public Guardian’s responsibilities include registering lasting powers of attorney, supervising the work of deputies and guardians of missing persons, and protecting people who lack the capacity to make decisions for themselves. The Public Guardian’s responsibilities extend across England and Wales.

This role will be vital in the delivery of policy changes that support the Public Guardian’s statutory duties and in taking forward the OPG's transformational activity, ensuring that policy changes are properly evidenced, have ministerial support and meet strategic goals.

The successful candidate will be part of a team of approximately 5 policy staff, and will be responsible for initiating, evidencing and delivering policy changes that enhance or expand the Public Guardian’s role. The role will lead key areas of transformation, working in multi-disciplinary teams on project delivery to ensure business changes are coordinated.

The role will also provide advice and guidance to the business on operational policy matters as required, supporting business delivery.

They will work collaboratively with operational staff within OPG and with wider policy colleagues across MoJ and the wider civil service on shared agendas.

There may be a requirement to line manage staff as part of this role.

Some travel will be required to fulfil the requirements of this role.

Job Description, Duties and Responsibilities:

The role provides an incredible opportunity to shape the future of the Office of the Public Guardian. The role will involve working closely with stakeholders, users and across government to develop proposals that will affect millions of people in England and Wales.

You have a ‘can do - will do’ approach to your work and pride yourself on your attention to detail. As an amazing communicator, you will confidently deliver messages in a clear and concise manner to a range of stakeholders applying a tailored approach to your audience, offering pragmatic advice when required.

The post holder will be responsible for identifying customer impacts, promoting good policy design and customer centricity. This will also involve making sure that customer insight that has been gathered is used and fed back into the policy design so that OPG can show stakeholders we have understood what they are telling us and that we have used what they have told us to deliver a better outcome for them.

Key Accountabilities:

1.    Effectively communicate the conclusions of their analysis to Senior Officials, Ministers, and other partners, influencing the direction of OPG/MoJ policy.

2.    Lead and support policy development, scoping out and planning new projects, identifying the best policy development tools, the key deliverables and outputs, and prioritising work streams with the greatest impact to improve OPG’s understanding of an issue and inform policy advice.

3.    To manage the timely dissemination of policy and guidance to OPG business areas and stakeholders.

4.    To consult and work effectively with internal and external colleagues to ensure that development and implementation processes are efficient, effective, provide value for money, and support OPG in complying with its legislative duties.

5.    Become an ambassador for OPG and supporting the Grade 7 to ensure the relevant teams can effectively operate, and influence OPG policy and decision-making.

6.    Shaping the culture of OPG through contributing to corporate work streams, which aim to make OPG an excellent place to work.

7.    Collaborate with other teams in the department on ad-hoc urgent pieces of work.

8.    Provide prompt and high-quality responses to requests for information, including internal and external queries and briefings to senior managers.

9.    Provide advice and recommendations to colleagues on the detail of policy to support the delivery of OPG activity.

10.  To be a senior leader of the organisation, demonstrating the values and behaviours expected and to partake in relevant activity to demonstrate OPG’s leadership, both internally and externally.

This is an overview of the role and is not exhaustive. OPG reserves the right to assign other duties commensurate with the B grade as required.

Skills & Qualifications

Essential criteria:

  • Experience of either working within a policy role, or, working closely with devising policy.
  • Ability to work autonomously, use initiative, deliver at pace and identify and develop key stakeholder relationships quickly. Be comfortable working with ambiguity, being pragmatic when required.
  • Excellent leadership, communication and stakeholder management skills.
  • Ability to challenge robustly, influence and deliver through others to keep work on track and ensure quality outcomes.
  • Good political awareness and an appreciation of Government priorities.
  • Proven ability to deliver against stretching deadlines and manage conflicting priorities.
  • A flexible, creative and analytical approach to problem solving.

Desirable criteria:

  • Experience of setting strategy to align with business priorities.
  • In-depth customer knowledge and how this applies in a policy context.
  • Sound understanding of policy design and how to embed the customer into this.
  • Knowledge and experience of developing policies, guidance and frameworks under which an organisation delivers its work.
  • Knowledge and experience of managing a programme of work.
  • Track record of planning projects and delivering them to agreed timescales.
  • Experience of promoting change or influencing the behaviour and actions of others.
  • Line management experience.

Application process

This vacancy is being advertised using Success Profiles. Candidates will be expected to provide a CV (2 pages of A4 maximum, preferably 12pt Arial) plus a supporting Personal Statement of Suitability of no more than 1250 words capturing evidence of the essential and desirable criteria as listed on the Job Description.

Strengths based analysis

If you are successful at sift, you will be invited to an interview which will follow the Success Profiles process. At interview candidates should expect Strength-based questions and questions relating to the below Civil Service Behaviours;

Communicating and Influencing

Seeing the Big Picture

Delivering at Pace

Making Effective Decisions

The individual will also be required to complete a presentation at interview.

Salary, Working Arrangements and Benefits

Please see our Candidate Information Pack for full details.

Working Arrangements & Further Information

Some of MoJ’s terms and conditions of service are changing as part of Civil Service reform. The changes will apply to staff joining MoJ who are new to the Civil Service. Staff joining MoJ from other civil service employers will transfer onto the new MoJ terms if they are already on 'modernised' terms in their current post or onto 'unmodernised' MoJ terms if they are on 'unmodernised' terms at their current post. Details will be available if an offer is made.

Flexible working hours

The Ministry of Justice offers a flexible working system in many offices.

Benefits

The MoJ offers a range of benefits:

Annual Leave

Generous allowances for paid holiday starting at 25 days per year, and rising as your service increases. There is also a scheme to allow qualifying staff to buy or sell up to three days leave each year. Additional paid time off for public holidays and 1 privilege day. Leave for part-time and job share posts will be calculated on a pro-rata basis.

Pension

The Civil Service offers a choice of pension schemes, giving you the flexibility to choose the pension that suits you best.

Training

The Ministry of Justice is committed to staff development and offers an extensive range of training and development opportunities.

Support

  • A range of ‘Family Friendly’ policies such as opportunities to work reduced hours or job share.
  • Access to flexible benefits such as voluntary benefits,retail vouchers and discounts on a range of goods and services.
  • For any moves across the Civil Service may have implications on your ability to carry on claiming childcare vouchers
  • Paid paternity, adoption and maternity leave.
  • Free annual sight tests for employees who use computer screens.

Networks

The opportunity to join employee-run networks that have been established to provide advice and support and to enable the views of employees from minority groups to be expressed direct to senior management. There are currently networks for employees of minority ethnic origin, employees with disabilities, employees with caring responsibilities, women employees, and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees.

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code 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. Should you feel that the recruitment process has breached the recruitment principles you are able to raise a formal complaint in the following order

1-      To Shared Service Connected Ltd (0845 241 5358 (Monday to Friday 8am - 6pm) or e mail Moj-recruitment-vetting-enquiries@sscl.gse.gov.uk);

2-      To Ministry of Justice Resourcing (resourcing-services@justice.gov.uk);

3-      To the Civil Service Commission (details available here)

The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equality of opportunity.

There is a guaranteed interview scheme (GIS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.

Grading Structure Review

The Ministry of Justice is currently undergoing a review of posts which are currently graded at Band A to realign our grading structure with the majority of the wider Civil Service.

Posts advertised at Band A may be graded at either Grade 6 or Grade 7 once the review has taken place.  

To be confirmed

24/01/2020, 23:55 hours.

If you require any assistance please call 0845 241 5359 (Monday to Friday 8am - 6pm) or e mail Moj-recruitment-vetting-enquiries@sscl.gse.gov.uk Please quote the job reference - 31914.
Please note the successful applicant will need to undertake a Disclosure and Barring Security Check for this post.

To apply for roles in MOJ you will need to confirm your employment history for at least 3 years prior to the date of application so that pre-employment checks (BPSS) can be undertaken. If you have spent significant time abroad (a total of 6 months in the past 3 years) you would be required to give a reasonable account of the reasons why. 

For some roles you will be required to successfully complete National Security Vetting at Counter Terrorism (CTC), Security Clearance (SC) or Developed Vetting (DV) level as a condition of appointment. To meet CTC/SC/DV requirements you will normally need to have been resident in the UK for at least 3/5/10 years prior to the date of application (The level of checks that are required are stated in the advert).

If you do not meet the above requirements, you may still be considered if, for example:

  • You've been serving overseas with HM Forces or in some other official capacity as a representative of HM Government
  • You were studying abroad
  • You were living overseas with parents

In such cases you will need to be able to provide referee cover for the period(s) of residence overseas. The duration of overseas residence and the country of abode will also be taken into account.

Success Profiles will enable a fairer and more inclusive method of recruitment by enabling us to assess the range of experiences, abilities, strengths, behaviours and technical/professional skills required for different roles. This flexible approach to recruitment focuses more on finding the right candidate for the specific role. To find out more about Success Profiles to support your application please click here for further guidance.

if you feel that your application has not been treated in line with the Civil Service Recruitment Principles, please contact SSCL (Moj-recruitment-vetting-enquiries@gov.sscl.com) in the first instance

We have provided detail of the assessment stages and areas being assessed to help you prepare for completing your application form, and to advise of what will be assessed following this, if you successfully pass the application stage.


Application form stage assessments

Experience
Statement of Suitability - 1250 word limit

Interview stage assessments

There is 1 interview stage for this vacancy.
Behaviours
Communicating and Influencing
Seeing the Big Picture
Delivering at Pace
Making Effective Decisions
Strengths may also be assessed at interview but these are not shared in advance.
Additional Assessment(s)
Presentation

A Great Place to Work for Veterans

The "Making the Civil Service a Great Place to work for veterans" initiative includes a guaranteed interview scheme to those who meet the minimum criteria to provide eligible former members of the Armed Forces with opportunities to secure rewarding jobs. Allowing veterans to continue to serve their country, and to bring highly skilled individuals with a broad range of experience into the Civil Service in an environment, which recognises and values your previous service in the Armed Forces.
For further details about the initiative and eligibility requirements visit : https://www.gov.uk/government/news/making-the-civil-service-a-great-place-to-work-for-veterans

Redeployment Interview Scheme

Civil Service departments are expected to explore redeployment opportunities before making an individual redundant. The MoJ are committed, as part of the Redeployment Interview Scheme, to providing opportunities to those who are 'at risk of redundancy'.

MoJ are able to offer an interview to eligible candidates who meet the minimum selection criteria, except in a limited number of campaigns. Candidate's will not be eligible for the Redeployment Interview Scheme if they are applying on promotion.

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) https://www.gov.uk/settled-status-eu-citizens-families

· 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) https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nationality-rules

This Vacancy is closed to applications.