Ministry of Justice

Job Title:    

Business Continuity & Resilience Manager    

Contract Type:    Permanent
Grade    SEO    

Salary range (depending on location):    National - £42,914 - £46,182
London - £49,325 - £53,081
Please note that unless you are currently employed by the Civil Service and are earning more than the minimum above, if successful you will be offered the minimum for the grade depending on your location.

Location:    

This role can be based at LAA offices in Birmingham, Brighton, Bristol, Cardiff, Cambridge, Leeds, London, Liverpool, Manchester, Nottingham, or South Tyneside. 

Please note that whilst this role is open to external candidates, you can only apply for London, Cambridge and Brighton offices if you are a current LAA staff member based in those offices. This is due to and in line with the LAA's Location Strategy and the Cabinet Office's Places for Growth Strategy.

40% office attendance is required.  That may be at your base location and other offices. Occasional travel to other offices will be required. 

Please note, depending on your location, you may be managed remotely and may be the only member of our team in the site. 

Directorate:    Corporate Services    

Team:    Corporate Assurance, Risk & Secretariat (CARS)

Working Pattern:    

The post is supported by the MOJ flexible working policy and includes colleagues who work flexibly, remotely, part time or as part of a job share etc.

If you are applying for a part time role, please note that in order to meet business requirements this role requires availability for a minimum of 28 hours. This role requires availability across core business days which includes Fridays. 

Reporting to:    

Head of Information Assurance and Security (Grade 7)

The Legal Aid Agency
We are an executive agency of the Ministry of Justice (MoJ). We provide civil and criminal legal aid and advice in England and Wales to help people deal with their legal problems.  
Our people are at the heart of achieving excellence. Employing around 1,200 colleagues across England and Wales, we feel proud to have some of the best People Survey results in the Civil Service. 
Our LAA commitment to Diversity and Inclusion
The LAA is committed to diversity and inclusion and we positively promote flexible working, including job shares. 
We will consider all applications on merit regardless of age, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, socio-economic background, religion, ethnicity, preferred working pattern and except for exceptional circumstances your working location. 
As a Disability Confident organisation, we will offer a guaranteed interview to candidates with a disability who meet the essential criteria for this role. Under the Equality Act 2010 a disability is defined as a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on your ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities which has lasted, or is expected to last, at least 12 months. 
If you are responding to a role within the Legal Aid Agency and would like to be considered under the guaranteed interview, please indicate this in your application and let us know of any reasonable adjustments you may require during the sift or later selection processes.
 
Corporate Services
Corporate Services help shape and enable the priorities of the Chief Executive and Executive Leadership Team (LExCo) to be delivered.
The LAA fully supports smart and flexible working.  Members of Corporate Services and the Corporate Assurance, Risk & Secretariat Team are based in multiple locations across England and Wales. Travel will be required as a fundamental part of the role. 
Corporate Assurance, Risk and Secretariat Team (CARS)
The CARS team comprises five teams with responsibility for LAA key functions: Health & Safety, Information & Data Security, Business Continuity, Risk and Assurance and Secretariat. The work of these teams collectively strengthens and supports LAA’s governance, assurance and risk management processes and provides support to the LAA’s senior governance forums including the Board and LAA’s Executive Committee. 
Job Summary
Business Continuity (BC) ensures the LAA has the organisational resilience to continue operational delivery of legal aid services during disruption, a serious incident or any event that impacts on critical systems, resources or places. 
As Business Continuity & Resilience (BC&R) Manager, you will lead on business continuity for the LAA, helping build and embed a strong BC culture. You will be responsible for ensuring that LAA has robust and tested BC plans and contingencies in place for all the critical digital services, operational processes and physical locations that the organisation relies on, to enable continued delivery of its priority services during periods of disruption.

Your work provides assurance to senior leaders, strengthens organisational resilience, and aligns LAA’s approach to business continuity management with professional and international standards, HMG BC frameworks and good practice. 

The BC&R lead plays a key role in LAA incident management; supporting the Incident Response Team (IRT) and National Crisis Management Team (NCMT) should they need to be convened. You will also act as a one of the primary contacts for MoJ in the event of an incident occurring that affects MoJ systems or sites where LAA is (or may be) impacted, working closely with MOJ’s Departmental Operations Centre during significant disruptions. 
Key Responsibilities:
•    Lead the lifecycle of Business Continuity planning, ensuring alignment with ISO 22301 principles and the 6 BCI Professional Practices (Policy & Programme Management, Embedding, Analysis, Design, Implementation, Validation)
•    Ensure business impact analyses (BIAs) and plans on the BC tool are up to date, risk-focussed, effective and tested 
•    Monitor, assess and report on incidents affecting LAA operational activity, briefing senior leaders as appropriate 
•    Maintain records of, and report on, all disruptions to the business 
•    Anticipating disruption, work closely with Digital and Security partners to ensure disaster recovery, cyber response and operational contingency plans are integrated and deliver an effective response
•    Drive continuous improvement by ensuring lessons learned from exercises and incidents are captured, tracked and actioned, and that preventative resilience measures are implemented to guard against future incidents. 
•    Promote a culture of resilience, raising awareness of BC responsibilities and embedding best practice across the organisation
•    Act independently on day-to-day resilience matters, escalating issues with significant impact as required. 
•    Provide advice and recommendations, including to senior leaders, on resilience implications of strategic and operational decisions. 
•    Provide advice and recommendations to stakeholders across the organisation on questions relating to BC or resilience, for example around commercial activity. 
•    Maintain the BC risk register, reporting on changes and emerging risks 
•    Provide BC reports and updates quarterly or as required as part of wider corporate reporting to LAA’s senior management and governance committees.
•    Support and take an active role in LAA’s Incident Management processes, including in incident planning and prevention and in the activation, co-ordination and operation of incident response processes.  
•    Serve as the LAA’s key contact with MoJ Operations Centre, MoJ Resilience teams, and MoJ Digital in the event of an IT, or service-related incident impacting LAA operations related incident impacting LAA operations related incident impacting LAA operations related incident impacting LAA operations
•    Line management of BC&R Officer(s)

Essential Qualifications    

•    Applicants that do not already hold a Certificate or Membership of the Business Continuity Institute (CBCI or MBCI) or an equivalent recognised qualification must be actively working toward this and will be required to obtain this within 12 months of being appointed. 

Essential Knowledge, Experience and skills    

•    Experience of working in a business continuity or organisational resilience role. 
•    Knowledge of resilience planning
•    Effective problem-solving skills with the ability to reach solutions based on experience
•    Ability to prepare and present reports to a high standard, including recommendations from the analysis of facts
•    Ability to communicate effectively and with confidence with staff at all levels
•    Ability to effectively influence others

Desirable Qualifications    

•    Certificate or Membership of the Business Continuity Institute (CBCI or MBCI) or an equivalent recognised qualification

Desirable Knowledge, Experience and skills    

•    Ability to plan and forecast effectively – thinking ahead and creating clear plans and priorities
•    Understanding of LAA operations such as its digital systems and working processes
•    Knowledge of the 6 BCI Professional Practices, the BC lifecycle and an understanding of ISO 22301 
•    Experience of incident management

Person Specification    

You demonstrate strong organisational skills and are someone that remains calm and effective during incidents. You show persistence in ensuring that BC and resilience planning is robust and effective, and work collaboratively to ensure delivery. 

This role requires National Security Vetting
Level CTC

Assessment approach 
Application Process 
To apply please submit a CV and statement of suitability showing how you meet the essential qualifications, knowledge, experience and skills listed above in no more than 1,250 words.

Your statement should demonstrate your ability to do all of the essential criteria listed, using examples can help strengthen your application.
Interview / assessment Process
If you are successful through the application stage, you will be invited to an interview / assessment centre in person or via Microsoft Teams where you will be assessed against the following: 
•    Strengths relevant to the role

• The following Behaviours: 
  Seeing the Big Picture
• Leadership
• Managing a Quality Service
• Communicating and influencing

•    The following experience

• Your experience of implementing, promoting, or understanding diversity and inclusion policy
• Your experience of working in a business continuity or organisational resilience role

Please note, that if you progress to interview, you will be asked to provide evidence of the qualifications you’ve stated on your application.

Shortlisting is planned for week commencing 6th April 2026
Interviews are planned for weeks commencing 20th April and 27th April 2026
If you would like more information on this opportunity, please contact – Gary Winter: gary.winter@justice.gov.uk

Complaints procedure

If you have any complaints about this recruitment activity, please share your concerns by emailing LAACentralRecruitmentFunction@justice.gov.uk initially. We aim to respond to any complaint within 10 working days. 
If you are dissatisfied with our response, we will forward your complaint to the Civil Service Commission, an independent body, for review.