Deputy Director for Passports, Identity and Nationality Policy

Home Office

Apply before 11:55 pm on Monday 11th November 2024

 

Details

Reference number

376153

Salary

£76,000 - £86,000
A Civil Service Pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%

Job grade

SCS Pay Band 1

Contract type

Permanent

Business area

HO - Migration and Borders

Type of role

Policy

Working pattern

Flexible working, Full-time, Job share, Part-time

Number of jobs available

1

Contents

Belfast, Bristol, Cardiff, Croydon, Durham, Glasgow, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Peterborough, Portishead, Sheffield, Solihull

Job summary

The challenge 

The Home Office is central to UK life. Our work extends from devising drugs policies and ensuring the immigration system is not being abused, to delivering an accountable policing service. When you join us in this vital role, you’ll provide policy leadership and challenge to your operational colleagues in the Passport, Citizenship and Civil Registration (PCCR) and Visa, Status and Information Services (VSI) Directorates. Leading a team of around 30, your work will affect British citizens as well as users of the migration and borders system. 

Job description

The role 

This is an exciting time to join the Home Office, and you’ll be responsible for the full sweep of passport policy, working with His Majesty’s Passport Office to ensure the successful delivery of its on-going transformation programme. You’ll focus on supporting productivity and efficiency measures, enhancing the quality of decision-making and ensuring guidance is up-to-date and accurate. You’ll also work on nationality policy, the implementation of measures introduced under recent legislation, and oversee training for the Overseas Territories that discharge nationality functions. 

Operating with colleagues across the Home Office on policies relating to identity assurance in the migration and borders system, your work will include the primary and secondary legislation that governs our use of biometrics, and oversight of litigation against some of our key biometric policies. Capable of demonstrating inspirational leadership, management and stakeholder engagement skills while providing expert advice to senior management and ministers, you’ll be flexible, have a strong focus on partnership working  and be ready to support the drive for productivity and excellence in customer service. 

Person specification

About you 

With a proven track record of the end-to-end delivery of policy and legislative reforms that produce real world outcomes, you’ll possess sound decision-making skills and the ability to lead a large and diverse policy portfolio. Capable of empowering, supporting and working with a team spread over a wide geographical area, you’ll also be comfortable operating across a complex system with a wide range of stakeholders to deliver on multiple outcomes. 

You’ll possess excellent interpersonal and communication skills, and with this in mind you’ll have the ability to develop positive relationships with Ministers and senior officials, and be comfortable working with ambiguity. Your strong analytical and problem-solving abilities will enable you to make data-driven and evidence-based policy development decisions, and any knowledge of the migration and borders system and passport, identity and nationality policies would be an advantage. 

In return for your skills and expertise we can offer you a great career with one of the Government’s most interesting and inclusive departments. And with ongoing training and development opportunities and a highly competitive benefits package, there’s no saying where your career will take you at the Home Office. 

For further information about this opportunity please refer to the candidate pack attached at the bottom of the page.

Alongside your salary of £76,000, Home Office contributes £22,017 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.
  • 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 employer contribution of 28.97%

Selection process details

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:

Policy and legal knowledge: 

  • A proven track record of delivering policy reforms that deliver real world outcomes.
  • A strong understanding of the end-to-end delivery of policy and legislative reforms including sound decision-making.

Leadership and Strategic Management:

  • An ability to lead a large and diverse policy portfolio, comfortable working with ambiguity.
  • An ability to empower, support and work through a team spread over multiple locations (currently Liverpool, Peterborough, Sheffield, Durham, Cardiff and London).
  • A track record of working across a complex system, drawing in a wide range of stakeholders with different priorities to deliver on multiple outcomes with a strong focus on supporting operations and business change.

Collaboration and Partnership:

  • An ability to engage with Policy, Operations, and Legal to help design and deliver high quality policy and operational outcomes.
  • An ability to work and build trust with Ministers and senior officials.
  • Excellent interpersonal and communication skills to collaborate with external stakeholders, including Other Government Departments.

Analytical and Decision-Making Skills:

  • Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities, enabling data-driven decision-making and evidence-based policy development.
  • Show good judgement in navigating through ambiguity and competing priorities.

Desirable Experience

  • A good understanding of the Migration and Borders system.
  • Knowledge of passport, identity and/or nationality policies. 

 

Online Application   

Please follow the Job Advert instructions on the Civil Service Jobs website to apply online, no later than 23:55hrs on Monday 11th November 2024.

Provide some basic personal information;

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;

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.

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.
This role has a minimum assignment duration of 3 years. An assignment duration is the period of time a Senior Civil Servant is expected to remain in the same post to enable them to deliver on the agreed key business outcomes. The assignment duration also supports your career through building your depth of expertise.

As part of accepting this role you will be agreeing to the expected assignment duration set out above. This will not result in a contractual change to your terms and conditions. Please note this is an expectation only, it is not something which is written into your terms and conditions or indeed which the employing organisation or you are bound by. It will depend on your personal circumstances at a particular time and business needs, for example, would not preclude any absence like family friendly leave. It is nonetheless an important expectation, which is why we ask you to confirm you agree to the assignment duration set out above.

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.

Diversity and Inclusion

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).
This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) initiative.
Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.

Contact point for applicants

Job contact :

  • Name : Kash Chand
  • Email : Kash.Chand@homeoffice.gov.uk

Recruitment team

  • Email : HOrecruitment.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk

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