Planning, Performance and Risk Directorate

The Ministry of Justice is a major government department at the heart of the justice system. We deliver some of the most fundamental public services including courts, tribunals, prisons, legal services, youth justice, probation services and attendance centres.

The new Planning, Performance and Risk (PPR) Directorate has been created to strengthen the Ministry of Justice’s ability to deliver departmental priorities by bringing together performance insight, delivery assurance and targeted intervention within a single, cohesive structure.

The directorate ensures that our existing performance and planning processes are robust, evidence-based, and aligned to departmental priorities and the Justice Delivery Plan and is delivering a new programme of performance activity to influence the culture and behaviour of the organisation.

The directorate reflects the ambition from the Permanent Secretary and the Deputy Prime Minister to deliver a step change in performance management across the department and build a high-performance culture. We will support the Permanent Secretary, Deputy Prime Minister, and Ministerial team with greater transparency, assurance and oversight through the new monthly Justice Performance Board.

The Directorate has five divisions, including the Performance Delivery Unit; the Planning and Performance Capability Office; the Performance Analysis Division; the Risk Unit and the Department Operations Centre (DOC).

The Performance Delivery Unit (PDU) is a newly formed division, created to improve understanding of delivery and performance challenges and to drive improvements in priority areas across the MoJ, its agencies and public bodies by bringing insight and evidence into senior decision-making forums.

It comprises two teams, each headed by a G6:

• The Implementation Unit, whose purpose is to carry out deep-dives to support ministerial priorities, engaging with front-line staff and service users to better understand implementation issues and support the development of deliverable policies.

• The Performance Support Unit, whose purpose is to provide support to senior leaders to drive performance improvement in priority areas, using data and insight to identify and unblock performance issues, making recommendations, and ensuring that performance improvement actions are visible at senior performance boards and are progressing at pace.

This role sits in the Performance Support Unit.

Information about the MoJ and its priorities can be found at www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-justice/about

About the Role

This is an exciting opportunity to join a dynamic directorate who works closely with MoJ’s Executive Committee (ExCo) and Ministers to deliver the department’s long-term strategic planning and performance monitoring functions.

Working to a G7 Performance Delivery Lead, the SEO Performance Delivery Manager has responsibility for supporting the delivery of performance improvement activity across the MoJ, its agencies and public bodies.

This role enables the Permanent Secretary’s priority of creating a high-performance culture by supporting the identification and resolution of performance challenges across the department.

You will be required to work with counterparts across all areas of the department and make use of existing performance data and insight to build a clear understanding of performance challenges impacting the delivery of departmental and agency priorities, supporting effective performance conversations at performance boards and in other forums.

You will also be responsible for supporting the delivery of performance improvement activities in priority areas identified by Ministers or the Permanent Secretary, making use of performance delivery tools to unblock challenges and identify improvement actions.

Travel - Occasional travel to MoJ Headquarters in London (102 Petty France) to attend Team awayday and events.

Main Activities/Key Responsibilities

• Build relationships with performance, policy, transformation and operational colleagues across the MoJ, its agencies and public bodies contributing to a clear shared understanding of performance and delivery challenges.

• Support the development of impactful performance insight, ensuring challenges are clearly understood and contribute to a consistent performance narrative across forums.

• Monitor performance challenges and improvement activities across the department, ensuring a consistent grip of improvement activities and providing challenge, where appropriate.

• Make use of performance delivery tools to understand and support the resolution of delivery challenges across the MoJ, its agencies and public bodies.

• Undertake performance improvement activities with the MoJ, its agencies and public bodies, including but not limited to: rapid reviews, delivery challenge sessions and the use of delivery tools (e.g. system mapping, critical path analysis), ensuring high quality and impactful outputs.

• Contribution to wider improvement activities for the PDU, enabling innovation and supporting the development of a positive team culture.

Person specification

Essential Criteria (will be assessed via statement of suitability):

• Proven ability to work with wider stakeholders and deliver cross-departmental activities to improve outcomes.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to communicate effectively with stakeholders at all levels.

• Strong analytical skills, able to apply different methods to process large amounts of conflicting and complex information to make clear recommendations in a short space of time.

• Ability to work autonomously to deliver at pace in uncertain environments.

Desirable Experience:

• Knowledge of the justice system.

• Previous experience working in a Delivery Unit or equivalent.

Please note that whilst we don’t assess or score ‘desirable’ criteria, we may consider evidence provided that demonstrates meeting the desirable elements of the role, only after essential criteria is assessed and where there is a need to differentiate between closely scored candidates. 

Application process

You will be assessed against the Civil service success profiles framework.

Application Stage:

A statement of suitability of no more than 500 words explaining how you meet the essential criteria listed above.

Behaviours - Please provide a 250 word example of how you meet the Behaviour Communicating and influencing (Lead Behaviour)

Please refer to the CS Behaviours framework for more details at this grade.

In the event of receiving a high volume of applications, we will conduct an initial sift focusing on the lead behaviour of 'Communicating and Influencing’.

Candidates invited to Interview

Please note that interviews will be conducted over Microsoft Teams.

Applicants progressed to interview will be assessed via the following behaviours:

• Communicating and Influencing (Lead Behaviour)

• Changing and Improving

• Working Together

• Delivering at Pace.

Candidates will also be asked to give a presentation, with details provided to those who pass the sift stage.