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.
The Access to Justice Directorate is recruiting permanently for up to three SEO Senior Policy Advisers. This campaign is being run externally and so is open to all who consider themselves suitable for the roles and meet the eligibility criteria in the wider advert within Civil Service Jobs.
Location
Successful candidates will have the option to be based at one of the following locations:
- 102 Petty France, London
- 5 Wellington Place, Leeds (occasional travel between Leeds and London may be required post Covid-19)
Ways of Working
At the MoJ we believe and promote alternative ways of working, these roles are available as:
- Full-time, part-time or the option to job share
- Flexible working patterns
- Flexible working arrangements between base locations, MoJ Hubs and home.
Our staff, who have an HQ building as their base location, are expected to work in an office at least 2 days per week.
If we receive applications from more suitable candidates than we have vacancies for at this time, we may hold suitable applicants on a reserve list for 12 months, and future vacancies requiring the same skills and experience could be offered to candidates on the reserve list without a new competition.
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ)
MOJ is one of the largest government departments, employing around 70,000 people (including those in the Probation Service), with a budget of approximately £9 billion. Each year, millions of people use our services across the UK - including at 500 courts and tribunals, and 133 prisons in England and Wales.
Further information can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-justice
The Legal Support and Fees Policy Unit
The Legal Support and Fees Policy division sits within the Access to Justice directorate, one of the largest policy directorates in the MoJ. The directorate has an overarching objective to protect the constitutional right of access to justice and is therefore responsible for a wide range of policy areas that directly affect people’s lives.
The Legal Support and Fees Policy Division is split into two teams, the Legal Support Team and the Fees Policy Team. Both play a key role in ensuring everyone can access support and guidance to help them with their legal issues, and the courts when they need to. Our division covers exciting, fast paced, and challenging policy areas and has significant interest from our Ministerial Team, No 10, HM Treasury, and the judiciary, as well as external stakeholders. We work daily with policy colleagues from across government, lawyers, analysts and finance, as well as with operational colleagues, to shape, develop and improve the operation of our justice system.
The advertised roles sit within the Legal Support Team, we are responsible for delivering changes to enhance the breadth of legal support available for everyone in society and are delivering a wide range of measures outlined in the Government’s Legal Support Action Plan (Feb 2019). Our policy areas have the potential to impact and make a real difference to everyone in society, as well as having significant interest from legal professionals, justice stakeholders and the third sector.
The Role
As a senior policy adviser within our Legal Support Team you will be expected to lead specific projects, this may include one or more of the following areas of work:
- Working with MoJ Digital colleagues to deliver an ambitious programme of online work in the next 12 months, including identifying how people self-diagnose their legal problems and access legal support, bolstering the most effective digital ‘routes in’ to GOV.UK public legal information content, working with OGDs and third sector organisations to review and improve existing legal support information and services, including signposting on GOV.UK to external services, and developing new content to fill gaps identified.
- Work with our partners to effectively manage national, regional and local grants funded to charities across England and Wales supporting litigants in person (those who are unrepresented when coming to court) and monitor existing grants to the third sector in light of the impacts of COVID-19 who provide specialist legal advice.
- Shape the delivery of pilots aimed at providing early legal advice and providing support to individuals through “trusted intermediaries” and or “hubs”, which will involve making connections with other government departments such as NHS Property Services and delivery partners in the third sector.
- Leading and supporting colleagues during each stage of policy development, problem solving, and strategic thinking to improve how existing policy and legislation works in practice through identifying options and making recommendations.
- Scoping, planning, and managing work, including contributing to project management, analysis, management of risks and dependencies to your policy.
- Working with minsters, internal and external stakeholders and other government departments, providing clear verbal and/or written advice and briefings as required.
- Managing stakeholders, ensuring they are consulted appropriately and contribute to policy development.
- Take a lead role in projects related to your policy and contribute appropriately to other relevant working groups or governance boards, including working with those impacted by the policy you are working on.
- Some roles will have line management duties, all staff are encouraged to support and help develop colleagues.
Alongside your core role, you will have the opportunity to get involved in corporate projects across the department (e.g. wellbeing, diversity & inclusion, mentoring, and recruitment) to support how we work as a team and contribute to the Ministry of Justice as a whole.
In return, you will have access to many training opportunities on a range of topics, for example: leadership and coaching, effective writing, stakeholder engagement and partnership working, we also offer a variety of wellbeing checks.
We will work with you to establish your interests and skills to match you to one area. It is important to remember, however, that the Government’s priorities do develop and change, resulting in our organisational structures and areas of focus sometimes changing too. As a policy adviser you are expected to be adaptable to this. You may be re-prioritised and be asked to work on other subject matters, sometimes at short notice (though this is rare).
Skills and Experience
Essential
- The ability to develop high-quality and deliverable policy recommendations, at pace, in a public and political arena.
- You will display creativity, confidence, and have strong leadership potential. You will be an excellent problem solver.
- You will be able to write to a very high standard and be able to interpret and analyse information clearly and concisely in a way that enables effective decisions to be made.
- You will have strong communication, influencing, and relationship-building skills with the proven ability to communicate effectively with a wide range of audiences (including internal and external stakeholders) bringing together a range of different views to generate common goals.
- You will be proactive, organised, and work collaboratively to reach your end goal.
- You will have good political awareness and understand the wider departmental, government, societal, financial and parliamentary context. Your advice will also be able to take account of the existing legal and regulatory frameworks.
Application process
You will be assessed against the Civil service success profiles framework.
Experience
You will be asked to provide a CV during the application process in order to assess any demonstrable experience, career history and achievements that are relevant to the role.
Behaviours
During the application process you will be asked to provide an example of how you have met the following behaviour (see Annex A for more information):
- Communicating and Influencing
Provide an example of when you have communicated something in a straightforward, honest and engaging manner, choosing the right style to maximise the audiences understanding and their agreement to your work.
- Making Effective Decisions
Provide an example of when you have used a range of relevant, credible information frorn a number of stakeholders to support the recommendations/decisions you were making.
Provide an example of how you've ensured your work aligns with and supports wider organisational objectives.
Provide an example when you have brought different people together to deliver on a piece of work.
Please also refer to the CS Behaviours framework for more details at this grade:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/717275/CS_Behaviours_2018.pdf
Should we receive a large number of applications, we will sift primarily on the lead behaviour of Communicating and Influencing. Successful applicants will then be invited to an interview, testing both behaviours and strengths.
Candidates invited to Interview
Please note that interviews will be carried out remotely.
During the interview, we will be assessing you on Behaviours and Strengths from the success Profiles framework.
You can refer to the CS Strengths dictionary for more details: Success Profiles - Civil Service Strengths Dictionary (publishing.service.gov.uk)
Interviews are expected to take place in April 2022.
The MoJ is proud to be Level 3 Disability Confident. Disability Confident is the approach through which we offer guaranteed interviews for all people with disabilities meeting the minimum criteria for the advertised role as set out in the job description.
Contact information
Please do get in touch if you would like to know more about the role or what it is like working in our team. Charlene Hird at Charlene.hird@justice.gov.uk
Annex A - The STAR method
Using the STAR method can help you give examples of relevant experience that you have. It allows you to set the scene, show what you did, and how you did it, and explain the overall outcome.
Situation - Describe the situation you found yourself in. You must describe a specific event or situation. Be sure to give enough detail for the job holder to understand.
- Where are you?
- Who was there with you?
- What had happened?
Task - The job holder will want to understand what you tried to achieve from the situation you found yourself in.
- What was the task that you had to complete and why?
- What did you have to achieve?
Actions - What did you do? The job holder will be looking for information on what you did, how you did it and why. Keep the focus on you. What specific steps did you take and what was your contribution? Remember to include how you did it, and the behaviours you used. Try to use “I” rather than “we” to explain your actions that lead to the result. Be careful not to take credit for something that you did not do.
Results - Don’t be shy about taking credit for your behaviour. Quote specific facts and figures. Explain how the outcome benefitted the organisation or your area. Make the outcomes easily understandable.
- What results did the actions produce?
- What did you achieve through your actions and did you meet your goals?
- Was it a successful outcome? If not, what did you learn from the experience?
Keep the situation and task parts brief. Concentrate on the action and the result. If the result was not entirely successful describe what you learned from this and what you would do differently next time. Make sure you focus on your strengths.
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