Head of the Ministerial Business Unit

Grade 7

Private Office and Parliament

The Private Office and Parliament Directorate is recruiting permanently for Grade 7 Head of the Ministerial Business Unit. This campaign is open to current civil servants on level transfer and suitable candidates on promotion.

Location:

Successful candidates will have the option to be based at one of the following locations:

• 102 Petty France, London

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

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.

We welcome and encourage applications from everyone, including groups currently underrepresented in our workforce and pride ourselves as being an employer of choice. To find out more about how we champion diversity and inclusion in the workplace, visit: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-justice/about/equality-and-diversity

Salary

Existing Civil Servants will have their salary calculated in accordance with the Department’s pay on transfer / pay on promotion rules.  

Security Clearance

This role requires National Security Vetting given the access to sensitive information afforded by the job role. You can find more information by reviewing the information held in the following links:

United Kingdom Security Vetting: Applicant - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

The vetting charter - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

In addition, there is a minimum UK residency requirement set by the Cabinet Office which is dependent on the security level required for the role.

This role requires SC and to be eligible to apply for this role you should have been present in the UK continuously for the past 5 years.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ)

MoJ is the largest government department, employing over 90,000 people with a budget of approximately £10 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 Work of the Private Office and Parliament Directorate

The Ministry of Justice’s Private Office & Parliament Directorate is a supportive and collaborative group. It is also a busy and interesting place to work - it is the interface between senior officials, Ministers, the rest of the Department and Whitehall. 

This exciting vacancy sits at the heart of the directorate, and you will shape our work and our strategy for ensuring that Private Offices and the Parliamentary team have all the tools that they need to deliver a first-class service for Ministers. The role will be challenging and rewarding; the successful candidate will deliver an impeccable service, learn quickly and develop good quality relationships with senior finance and corporate leaders across the MOJ.

Head of the Ministerial Business Unit - the role

We are looking for an enthusiastic, self-starting Grade 7 to lead the directorate’s important business management function.

This is a unique opportunity to work closely with the POP Senior Management Team (SMT) and to lead a team of eight members of staff from various disciplines to deliver high quality support to a busy Directorate.

You will show strong leadership and work collaboratively with senior managers and staff to ensure the smooth running of the Directorate and to provide strategic support to the PPS and DPPS.

You will lead a team of approximately 18 members of staff to ensure the directorate is appropriately supported.

Main responsibilities:

Key responsibilities of the role include:

Providing strategic support to the PPS and DPPS, and wider SMT, including:

• Leading on business management functions for the Secretary of State’s office, leading on recruitment, workforce planning, finance, strategic corporate issues, and ensuring that the Private Secretaries and Parliamentary team have the tools and resources that they need to effectively support Ministers and the Permanent Secretary.

• Providing the PPS and DPPS with support across the full range of business and corporate areas in the Directorate - understanding and triaging the issues; helping him to prioritise areas of focus; and representing his views when required;

• Ensure Private Office staff are aware of the Information Management lifecycle (including creating it, storing it so that it can be found quickly and easily, sharing it appropriately and then either deleting it or preserving it when we don’t need it anymore).
  
  
  

Leading a first-class Ministerial Correspondence and Support Team, ensuring that:

• Ministerial correspondence write rounds and FOIs are processed in a timely and effective manner.

• That a rigorous process is in place for triaging and managing complex cases, escalating to Special Advisers and Ministers as required.

• Ensuring a robust performance management process is in place to set KPIs and track progress against those KPIs
  
  
  

Ensuring the smooth running of the Directorate through effective design and management of the BMU, including:

• taking overall responsibility for the delivery of business and administrative support within the Directorate, which includes representing the directorate at cross Departmental meetings on finance, recruitment and business management - representing the views of the PPS and DPPS;

• horizon scanning across the directorate to identify and get ahead of issues across recruitment, finance and business management;

• taking overall responsibility for managing the Directorate’s finance, workforce planning and resources, working closely with the PPS and senior management team in ensuring that we have the money and people we need to deliver our work;

• effectively leading your team to have day-to-day oversight of our staff and programme budget and working closely with finance and teams leads to improve the quality of financial reporting to senior management. This will include ensuring accurate and timely forecasting and the management of underspend;

• ensuring all central commissions relating to the corporate business of the Directorate are responded to effectively;

• ensuring all record keeping and surrounding processes are effective and maintained, allowing smooth responses to commissions as they arise.
  
  
  

Leading on cross-cutting, corporate projects for the Directorate, for example:

• supporting the SMT to take forward programmes of work on particular areas of corporate activity such as staff engagement and the People Survey.

Skills and Experience

Essential

The individual will:

• have strong leadership skills, particularly the ability to drive progress to get things done, build resilience in yourself and others and ensure high performance in a time of change;

• have impeccable organisational skills capable of managing and delivering a high volume of work at pace whilst ensuring quality;

• have the ability to develop and nurture effective relationships with colleagues and with wider stakeholders to ensure effective collaboration to get business done;

• have excellent judgement, combined with the ingenuity and independent ability to spot and manage risk and bring solutions to problems to POP SMT and the PPS/DPPS

• be able to quickly understand and prioritise often complex issues;

• be engaging, trustworthy and unafraid to challenge peers and senior colleagues to ensure the best outcome for the Directorate.

Desirable

Experience of finance and budget management would be an advantage as would experience of line management, but these are not essential.

Candidates applying from HMPPS should note that the Ministry of Justice does not have the same conditions of employment as HMPPS. It is the candidate’s responsibility to ensure they are aware of the terms and conditions they will adopt should they be successful.

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.

Application process

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

You must ensure that any evidence submitted as part of your application, including your CV, statement of suitability and behaviour examples, are truthful and factually accurate. Please note that plagiarism can include presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own.

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.

You will also be asked to upload a Statement of Suitability of no more than 500 words stating what you would bring to the role, with reference to the Skills and Experience listed above.

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):

• Leadership (Lead Behaviour)

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 Leadership. 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 panel interview, you will be asked behaviour-based questions to explore in detail what you are capable of, and strengths-based questions to also explore what you enjoy, and your motivations relevant to the job role.

In addition to the Behaviour(s) listed in the application form, you will be asked by the interview panel to provide examples of how you meet the additional behaviours listed below.

• Communicating and Influencing

• Making Effective Decisions

• Delivering at Pace

There is no expectation or requirement for you to prepare for the strengths-based questions in advance of the interview, though you may find it helpful to spend some time reflecting on what you enjoy doing and what you do well.

You can refer to the CS Strengths dictionary for more details: Success Profiles - Civil Service Strengths Dictionary (publishing.service.gov.uk)

Candidates invited to interview will also be required to give a 5-minute presentation at interview; details of this will be sent to those candidates who are invited for interview. 

Interviews are expected to take place May 2025.

At interview stage, if candidates do not score high enough to be appointed to a Grade 7 role, but have passed the minimal requirements, they could be offered a Policy role at SEO.

Contact information  

Please do get in touch with James Wrigley if you would like to know more about the role or what it is like working in our team at james.wrigley@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.