15015 - Deputy Controller for Youth Custodial Services at HMP Parc

£34,212 - £41,056
1
12 Months
Wales
Bridgend
HMP/YOI PARC BRIDGEND, CF35 6AP
SEO
Band 7
Permanent
Full Time
Operational Delivery

The role will be reporting into the Controller at HMP Parc and undertaking monitoring of the 60 bed Young Person Unit at HMP Parc. However, the successful candidate will need to operate across HMPPS in Wales and also Youth Custody Services (YCS), linking in with the Head of Wales for YCS.

Overview of the job

Summary

As Part of a Controller’s team based within a privately operated prison the Deputy Controller is the Authority for HMPPS and the Secretary of State.

The role of Deputy Controller is to oversee and report the activities, outputs and deliverables as stated in statute, contract and law within a prison setting. As operational lead to monitor and act as the authority in a number of contexts and oversee the contract and operations delivered inside the establishment. To manage and be accountable to the Controller and Director of Strategic Support, Administration and Assurance HMPPS Wales and the Executive Director of Youth Custody Services, HMPPS

Custodial Services Contract Management on areas of delegated authority.

The duties performed support those of the Controller. The Deputy Controller is to deputise for the Controller when he/she is not on site.

Reporting directly to the appointed Controller as first line Manager, who is in turn managed by the Director of Strategic Support, Administration and Assurance HMPPS Wales

Responsibilities, Activities & Duties

The job holder will be required to carry out the following responsibilities, activities and duties:

Monitor the contractor’s performance against the contract

  • To keep under review and report to the Secretary of State on the effectiveness of the prison in how it is being run and managed in accordance with the requirements of the contract(s)
  • Monitor via various means compliance against the contract requirements with particular attention to operational requirements and performance mechanisms. Liaise, discuss and plan as part of a working professional relationship with the contractor (Director and SMT) to develop action plans to address non-compliant clauses whilst keeping to realistic time scales in doing so
  • Conduct weekly monitoring rounds of establishment areas, including the segregation unit any areas holding Segregated Young Persons. Report on areas of non-compliance/adherence to the decency agenda to the contractor and follow up on actions to address concerns
  • Collate, analyse and interrogate information provided by the contractor. Investigate and gain further information if required and apply any performance management and reward sections of the contract providing a brief summary why you have come to your conclusion
  • Support the Controller in the application of performance debits/credits with the contractor using your skills knowledge and ability in making reference to the appropriate section of the contract and source document available to you
  • Produce a monthly and quarterly performance report for the Controller, from local and regional systems/resources available to you
  • Keep auditable records of all commercial contract matters

Manage additions and deletions of activity to the commercial contract and that changes are acted upon

  • Maintain effective links with MOJ Commercial and provide feedback and input as required as part of a team
  • Maintain full and current records of contract and NOC register between NOMS and the contractor. Review NOC register on a quarterly basis
  • Using appropriate evidence sources, work with contractor to draft NOC/amendments required to ensure contract remains aligned to business need
  • Assess, negotiate and advise the Controller on operational risks and potential consequences of contract changes (e.g. efficiency savings, SBC) concluding with the systematic management of the NOC process
  • To inform the Head of Group any areas where there has been a significant failure to comply with any changes identified

Audits & Compliance Testing -Controllers quality assurance

  • Conduct a programme of monitoring rounds of all establishment areas to a frequency agreed with the Controller as part of an annual assurance programme or adhoc risk areas in addition to Performance measure within Schedule F. Report on areas of non-compliance and poor practice to the contractor and follow up on actions to address concerns
  • Accountable for effective links between the establishment and specialist advisors, monitoring and reviewing delivery against Authority action plans for compliance against agreed timescales, report and manage those that are noncompliant
  • Validate evidence to ensure actions have been completed as required by the audit recommendation
  • Share knowledge and skills to assist the contractor improve performance and delivery against external recommendations i.e. AC&A/HMIP etc.
  • Monitor and review the level of compliance with operational requirements against PSOs/PSIs/LSS/ YCS Specification and or expectations by identifying the key risks/concerns which require a higher level of scrutiny or attention and follow up any plans to remedy compliance concerns
  • Monitor via reviews completion of investigation recommendations. Validate completion of task and adherence to timescale discuss at SMT level issues identified to resolve in gaining a satisfactory outcome
  • Carry out compliance checks as required by the Compliance Monitoring Tool recording findings as required and providing constructive feedback to the contractor and follow up any plans to remedy performance issues.
  • Conduct additional checks as necessary according to any concerns or issues identified recording method and any findings on the Compliance Monitoring Tool 
  • Validate Hub data. Quality assure data by conducting dip tests against data entered to ensure correct information is being presented to the Authority. To include any split data produced in relation to Young Persons department.

Perform the statutory duties required of the role holder (as per Section 85 Criminal Justice Act 1991).

  • Exercising power to investigate (on completion of successful Investigation training) Prisoner Custody Officers and hold the authority to suspend the certification of such an officer
  • Sign licences for release of prisoners/ Young Persons
  • Sign and authorise the release of prisoners on behalf of the Authority under HDC and ROTL taking into consideration all the required risk assessment and recommendations being made by departments/external agencies. To include attending early release boards for Young Person, appeal procedures and attending on site ROTL placements to carry out independent evaluation against risk assessment.

Assist in the management of major incidents within the establishment and adopt the formal role of Incident Liaison Officer. Make yourself available during the day or night, including weekends when as Duty Controller

  • Attend the command suite (if open) and act as Incident Liaison Officer as per PSO 1400. Subject to completing successfully a Silver Command Course.
  • Provide necessary advice and input to regional colleagues in operations and/or to Gold Command, as the authorities eyes and ears assist in gaining approval from the authority to deploy national resources when required to do so
  • Oversee the establishment’s management of incidents on behalf of the authority
  • Assess and evaluate the establishment’s effectiveness in incident management during and post the event
  • Deliver post event feedback verbally as part of the command suite structure and commit the management team to addressing the issues highlighted producing a report on the incident when required to do so

Support the commissioning of offender management and custodial interventions within the prison

  • Maintain relations with commissioning colleagues (HMPPS) and share knowledge of known suppliers and the quality of the service /HMPPS they provide
  • To attend the regional meetings that may be relevant in identifying any regional changes and or projects that may impact on or may increase a risk to the services being provided by the contractor and or any other meeting relevant to the services being delivered within the Establishment both public and private sector providers.

Work with the management team within the establishment to maintain and drive up performance levels and to assist the team in achieving the desired mix of services within the contract including offender needs and the addressing of the reducing re-offending agenda

  • Build positive professional high level relationships with the Senior Management Team, engage and resolve any issues that you are empowered to do to a satisfactory level
  • Be proactive in providing support and professional help and guidance to the contractors management team

 

PCO Certification

  • Liaise and maintain a good working relationship with the contractor’s HR and inform Shared Services of contractor staff suspensions and dismissal
  • Retain PCO badge during all suspensions
  • Provide brief to Shared Services relating to all reinstatements
  • Make recommendation to revoke and suspend a Prisoner Custody Officer licence where appropriate

Finance

  • Support the Controller to ensure all financial processes are discharged appropriately and that the correct levels of payment are made for delivered services (including the collection of performance credits and debits on behalf of the Authority)
  • Review business cases submitted by the contractor and approve/reject expenditure against the criteria laid out for the Utility Fee Savings Fund (or equivalent contractual provision)

Act as Local Information Manager (LIM)

  • Manage Deputy LIM
  • Lead on effective retention/disposal protocol
  • Lead on quarterly asset register reviews
  • Maintain accurate destruction log
  • Complete Annual Compliance Statement 
  • Follow PSO9010 (information technology security policy), PSO9015 (information assurance), PSO9020 (data protection/freedom of information) and PSO9025 (HMPS archiving retention and disposal)

Line Management Responsibilities

  • To support the Assist controller in the absence of other Controller team Members.
  • Brief your line manager on any relevant occurrences

Correspondence

  • Respond to prisoner complaints, solicitor’s letters, FOIs
  • Provide Ministerial briefings and response to PQ’s

Meetings

  • Attend Quarterly Contract Review Meeting and provide brief to external stakeholders on performance measure debits/credits
  • Attend Monthly Controller/Director meeting as required or directed by the Controller in his/her absence and provide brief to contractor on performance measures
  • Attend regional Professional Standards/Corruption meeting when required to do so
  • Chair meetings or telephone conferences as required or directed by the Controller in his/her absence

Other Duties

  • To be available to carry out on call duties, including where necessary attending the establishment when opening the command suite as the on call Duty Controller.
  • Deliver awareness session relating to ‘Role of Controller’ as required or directed by the Controller in his/her absence on the ITC
  • Deputise for the Controller whilst he/she is not on site. The role involves completing the full range of Controller’s duties and responsibilities when necessary and possibly when required across more than one site
  • Any ad hoc duties as deemed necessary by line management
  • To be the liaison point between prisons and HMPPS Population Management Unit and Youth Placements group, to assist in resolving issues between establishments and the contractor with the transfer and allocation of prisoners and prison places if required
  • Complete any task as identified in any additional Memorandum of Understanding with any third party or key stakeholders (applicable where there is more than one contract to manage on site) YCS / HMPPS / Controller.

Tasks specific to Young Persons allocated within the Establishment :

  • Regularly review (annually) Scheduled F part 2 to ensure that Performance measures are meaningful and purposeful and that they are being reported against correctly.
  • Review safeguarding referral and monitor CCTV linked to incidents providing a summary of event as part of an assurance process for the Controllers team. Inform appropriate department of child safeguarding measures when required to do so.
  • Review unit Stability for young Persons on a weekly basis, raising any concerns from the stability report from the Contractor, provide and share the stability outcomes with appropriate departments / directorates.
  • Represent the Controllers team as part of a Risk Review meeting with representatives of the YCS when required to do so.
  • Review and observe Adjudication process for Young Persons to ensure compliance to relevant legislation and or instructions. (This may be subject to attending an appropriate adjudication course to enhance own knowledge.)
  • To support the Contractor by being involved with behaviour case reviews.
  • To attend Young Person staff forums to support and pick on any issues being raised by Young Persons.
  • Engage appropriately with advocacy and Youth offender Teams and key stake holders relating to the management of Young persons.
  • To maintain a separate annul Risk register associated with the services being delivered for Young persons. Whilst recording all risks and reviewing those risk on a monthly basis.
  • To have an appropriate system in place to capture issues (issues log) associated with the delivery of services being provided for Young Persons. Reviewing these issues and taking appropriate action to rectify with the Contractor those issues identified.
  • Liaise and provide support to the appropriate department as part of any Commissioning of services during the annual commissioning round.
  • To provide support and compliance against any agreed Memorandum of Understanding between other agencies including HMPPS Wales, YCS, and YJB.

The duties/responsibilities listed above describe the post as it is at present and is not intended to be exhaustive. The Job holder is expected to accept reasonable alterations and additional tasks of a similar level that may be necessary. Significant adjustments may require re-examination under the Job Evaluation scheme and shall be discussed in the first instance with the Job Holder.

Competencies

For the purpose of selection the following competencies will be measured:

  • Seeing the Big Picture
  • Collaborating and Partnering
  • Achieving Commercial Outcomes
  • Persuading and Influencing
  • Making Effective Decisions
  • Managing a Quality Service

 

Essential Skills Qualifications, accreditation & Registration

Trained in HMPPS incident management systems or willing to undertake Training as soon as possible on taking up post. (Silver Command)

  • An ability to fulfil all spoken aspects of the role with confidence through the medium of English or (where specified in Wales) Welsh.
  • Be willing to register as a member of the IACCM to complete the Contract and commercial management certificate
  • Knowledge of MMPR, Safeguarding, children’s rights, child development
  • An ability to engage and communicate with young people in order to gain important intelligence on service quality.

Desired

  • Custodial experience
  • Contractual knowledge
  • Audit and or assurance experience

Working Arrangements & Further Information

Some of MoJ’s, including NOMS, 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.

Standard working hours for this post are 37 hours per week excluding breaks which are unpaid.

If you are a current NPS employee, this vacancy may be available on a Loan basis for up to 2 years. Applications are invited from suitable qualified staff.

The Loan/Secondment is subject to the approval of the selected candidate's Business Unit, which should be obtained before confirmation of appointment.

Benefits

Annual Leave

-The holiday year runs from 1 March. If you work a non standard work pattern your leave entitlement may be expressed in either hours or days as appropriate. Leave entitlement is calculated on a pro-rata basis and you will be advised of your actual entitlement on appointment. If you were appointed internally and your leave was previously calculated in days, this will continue to be the case.

Bank, Public and Privilege Holidays

-You are entitled to 9 days (66 hours 36 minutes) in recognition of bank, public and privilege holidays. These hours are added to your annual leave allowance. There is a requirement to work some public and bank holidays subject to your shift pattern and the operational needs of the establishment

Pension

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

Work Life Balance

-The Prison Service is keen to encourage alternative working arrangements. Work life balance provides greater opportunities for staff to work more flexibly wherever managers and establishments can accommodate requests to do so. The Prison Service offers flexible working subject to completion of a satisfactory probationary period and NVQ

Season Ticket Advance

-After two months’ service, you’ll be eligible to apply for a season ticket advance to purchase a quarterly or longer-period season ticket for travel between home and your place of work

Childcare Vouchers

-The Prison Service offers a childcare vouchers scheme. The scheme enables staff to take part of their salary in the form of Childcare Vouchers. This is known as a Salary Sacrifice. The vouchers can then be used to help meet the costs of any form of registered or approved childcare for children aged 0-16. The vouchers are exempt from tax and National Insurance contributions

Training

-The Prison Service is committed to staff development and offers a range of training and development opportunities, including areas such as Equality and Diversity, Dealing with Challenging Behaviour, Suicide Prevention and Anti Bullying Programmes

-There are opportunities to access promotion programmes and the Prison Service provide a variety of training appropriate to individual posts

-All staff receive security and diversity training and an individual induction programme into their new roles

Eligibility

-All candidates are subject to security and identity checks prior to taking up post

-All external candidates are subject to 6 months probation. Internal candidates are subject to probation if they have not already served a probationary period within NOMS

-All staff are required to declare whether they are a member of a group or organisation which the Prison Service considers to be racist

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.

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.

Interview dates will be confirmed following the sift in January 2018.

22/12/2017, 23:55 hours.

Closing Date: 22nd December 2017 at 23:55 hours

If you require any assistance please call 0845 241 5358 (Monday to Friday 8am - 6pm) or e mail Moj-recruitment-vetting-enquiries@sscl.gse.gov.uk. Please quote the job reference.

Enhanced Baseline Standard
Please note the successful applicant will need to undertake a Disclosure and Barring Security Check for this post.

Candidate Information

You may be required to provide statements describing your skills and experience relevant to each of the selection criteria. We recommend that you structure any examples as Situation, Task, Action and Result. For more information about the recruitment process and answers to general queries, please click the below link which will direct you to our Candidate Information Page.

Link: https://justicejobs.tal.net/vx/candidate/cms/About%20the%20MOJ

In the event of a large number of applications, we reserve the right to undertake the following processes:


  • An automated online test where a benchmark must be passed to progress;
  • A sift on the lead selection criteria. If this happens, the lead criteria will be the first one listed in the advert.

During the selection process, you may be asked to undertake an additional assessment (such as written test). If this is applicable you will be notified of this when you are invited to interview.



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
Seeing the Big Picture
Collaborating and Partnering
Achieving Commercial Outcomes
Persuading and Influencing

Effectiveness in this area means listening to each other, using reason and cooperation to reach agreement. We must all seeks to understand others’ perspectives whilst following through on agreements. Those who work in establishments must take time to understand the prisoners’ point of view and encourage prisoners to understand own / establishment’s perspective. At a senior level it is about promoting a culture of open interaction and effective consultation across all levels of the organisation. It is about influencing and involving the right people necessary to get things done.

Making Effective Decisions
Managing a Quality Service

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

Interview stage assessments

There is 1 interview stage for this vacancy.

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.