Chief of Staff to the Permanent Secretary

As a Deputy Director Chief of Staff, you will be managing a 20-30 person, multi-office network supporting a number of senior officials.

The team is one of the most dynamic teams in DCMS involved in all aspects of departmental business, supporting the Department’s senior leadership team with a high quality service.

Working as part of the wider PO team, Officials Private Office is a close-knit, friendly team working across the whole breadth of the department’s work. Working closely with DCMS senior leaders, ministerial private offices and policy officials, you will be part of a fast paced team, where you will need to engage regularly with the most senior parts of the department and have a good strategic eye.

This is a unique opportunity to influence decisions at the highest levels of government while helping ensuring DCMS is operating at its best.

The Chief of Staff provides strategic leadership and oversight of the Permanent Secretary's Office and the network of Director General (DG) Private Offices (PO) across the newly expanded department.

The Chief of Staff acts as the Permanent Secretary's principal adviser on corporate and cross-cutting issues, ensuring that strategic priorities are translated into effective action across the organisation. They provide leadership to the collective officials' PO function, strengthen alignment between senior offices, and ensure effective coordination with Ministerial POs.

The role is accountable for:

• Supporting the Permanent Secretary in the effective running of the department.
• Acting as a senior troubleshooter on complex, sensitive and cross-cutting issues.
• Leading and managing the Permanent Secretary's PO and DG PO network.
• Building coherence across senior leadership structures and ways of working.
• Leading a review of support arrangements for the Permanent Secretary and DGs to ensure they remain fit for purpose within an expanded department.
• Strengthening links between officials' POs, Ministerial POs and central corporate functions.
• Supporting crisis management and major incident responses affecting departmental leadership.

The post-holder contributes directly to the effectiveness of departmental leadership, governance, organisational performance and delivery.

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)

To apply for this vacancy, you will need to submit the following, via the Civil Service Jobs portal, which will assessed against the essential criteria for the role:

A CV setting out your career history, with key responsibilities and achievements.

• Please ensure you provide employment history that relates to the essential criteria, and that any gaps in employment history within the last 2 years are explained.
• The CV should not exceed more than 2 sides of A4 and you should copy and paste your CV into the "Job History" section on Civil Service Jobs on the Civil Service Jobs application form.

A Statement of Suitability explaining how you consider your personal skills, qualities and experience provide evidence of your suitability for the role.

• You must make direct reference to the essential criteria and back-up your statement with evidence rather than relying on assertions.
• This should be no more than a maximum of 1000 words.

For the shortlist, we will select applicants who demonstrate the best fit for the role by considering the evidence provided in your application and how this meets the essential requirements. Following the shortlist there are no further pass/fail assessment stages and all candidates shortlisted will be invited to the final interview stage.

Should you encounter any issues with your online application please get in touch with: scscandidate.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk

If you are shortlisted, you may also be offered a short, informal conversation with the Permanent Secretary ahead of the final panel interview.

Shortlist

The panel will assess your application to select those demonstrating the best fit with the role by considering the evidence you have provided against the criteria set out in the ‘essential requirements’ section of this pack. Failure to address any or all of these may affect your application.

Feedback

Following interview, all shortlisted candidates will receive their outcome along with some short written feedback on performance at interview.

Please note you will only receive feedback if you complete the interview stage.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.