Assistant Director, External Relations in London

Are you a senior press and public affairs professional, able to communicate sensitive issues to achieve understanding and impact? Do you know how to successfully engage with stakeholders, government and the media to ensure an organisation’s position is well understood? Are you motivated by communicating complex, sensitive and high profile issues about a vital area of national life? Can you lead a team to deliver joined up communications across media, political, stakeholders and events?

Reporting to the Director of Communications & Policy and a member of the Directorate’s senior leadership team, you will occupy this key leadership role for the Charity Commission as we build our wider visibility as an expert regulator that is fair, balanced and independent, to support the achievement of our strategic objectives. You will have diverse areas of responsibility - representing the organisation and influencing relationships across Parliament, key political stakeholders and the media, increasing the extent and quality of our engagement and proactively shaping and driving media coverage on often contentious and complex issues, to grow our impact and reputation and extend our reach.

You will work directly with the Chair, CEO, Directors, Board and senior leaders across the organisation in order to project the Commission’s visibility and influence. You will develop and communicate our messages to ensure that we are clear and confident about our role, and take the lead in managing the organisation’s reputation. This is important both to achieving impact from our policy and case work and to achieving progress in delivering our strategy. You will be one of the visible ‘faces’ of the Commission, influencing our relationships with key stakeholders across England and Wales. In this role, you will have a significant impact on external awareness and understanding of the organisation and its work and therefore on public trust, ultimately supporting charities’ ability to thrive.

To succeed in this role, you will be expert in your field in order to lead and shape the External Affairs, Media and Events teams’ activities; overseeing and improving our activity across key areas of work, including the Parliament and the media. You will be politically astute, understanding the external operating environment and building a close working relationship with the Chair and Executive to maximise the organisation’s impact and reputation.

Key Responsibilities:

• Innovating how we use our expert voice confidently as independent regulator shaping outcomes through influencing behaviour and growing confidence in the Commission and the sector it regulates.
• Ownership of the Commission’s narrative, ensuring it supports the Commission’s strategy, remains relevant and impactful, and is consistently delivered to external audiences.
• Ensuring high quality speechwriting support for the Chair and Chief Executive, through the effective leadership of other experts and sometimes playing a hands-on personal role.
• Ensuring strong internal relationships are built at senior levels and engaging actively with regulatory and other colleagues to ensure collaborative approaches are agreed and reputational issues are fully considered, amplifying the Commission’s overall impact.
• Outlining, developing and coordinating engagement with key stakeholders, playing a substantive personal role, influencing at senior level.
• Acting as an influential and credible senior spokesperson for the Commission, with the media (both in print and on broadcast interviews), and with senior stakeholders (up to CEO level with charities and sector bodies, and to MP and MS, senior government official and sometimes Ministerial level).
• Overseeing expertise within the team to develop external positions, targeting priority outlets and journalists, and proactively creating, shaping and placing media stories, articles and interviews which help support the achievement of our strategy and position the Commission as a fair, balanced and independent regulator.
• Ensuring media activity effectively supports Commission campaigns, events, digital services and policy reports, and that the press office anticipates and plans effectively for key events and cases and is robust and proactive.
• Ensuring a strategic approach to engaging with Parliament and the Senedd and advising the Board, CEO, Executive and senior staff across the Commission on all matters relating to Parliamentary affairs, ensuring we are listening and engaging, that our role is understood and our influence maximised.
• Ensure relevant team members have processes in place to meet deadlines for PQs, correspondence, ministerial briefings and monitoring Parliamentary events and that our approach is continuously improved.
• Supporting the Commission’s witnesses at Parliamentary Committees with strategic advice and ensuring timely and high quality written submissions are made to relevant Committees in line with the organisation’s narrative.
• Being accountable for ensuring that stakeholder relationships across England and Wales are actively managed across the Commission, to build stronger connections and extend our influence and insight.
• Overseeing our visits and events to ensure they are well managed, effective and impactful. This includes our flagship Annual Public Meeting.
• Ensuring a collaborative and innovative approach, working closely with colleagues responsible for our campaigns and our digital channels to deliver greater impact across all our communications.
• Ensuring the team operates effectively with an ambitious, insight-led and targeted approach, and a strong approach to planning, evaluation and professional development in line with Government Communications Service best practice.

Person specification

Essential Criteria

Ability:

• Ability to explain complex information, in a variety of media, including excellent written and oral communications skills. Able to write and shape copy to capture the appropriate tone and voice.
• A demonstrable ability to work flexibly and effectively under pressure, managing teams to meet multiple targets and deadlines.

Experience:

• Proven track record of successful leadership and direct management and development of expert staff with demonstrable experience of building a high performing team with a culture of continuous improvement.
• Excellent influencing and negotiating skills and the proven ability to build trust quickly; particularly building effective personal relationships with Board, senior staff across the Commission and with key external stakeholders.
• Experience of working with Parliament and the media and a strong professional network.
• Experience of using a range of communications techniques and vehicles to achieve positive, impactful outcomes.
• Experience of acting as a press and broadcast media spokesperson and effectively supporting and briefing other spokespeople.

Technical:

• Demonstrate clear understanding of the Charity Commission’s role and strategy and the current strategic and policy context.
• Strong understanding of current practice and trends in print, online and broadcast journalism and of successful techniques to create media coverage.
• Strong understanding of Parliament and stakeholder engagement approaches. The post holder will need to be particularly politically astute with an excellent understanding of the external operating environment.
• Good understanding of effective tools and techniques for planning, evaluating and innovating communications activities.
• Good understanding of how to leverage in person or online events, and digital and social media, to achieve wider impact for an organisation.

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Making Effective Decisions
• Communicating and Influencing
• Delivering at Pace