Job title: Head of Director's Office – Private Office, Parliamentary and Legislation (POP)
Grade: G7
Directorate: CPPL
Reports to: Director, Private Office Parliament and Legislation
Location: 102 Petty France, London SW1H 9AJ
Duration: 12 month loan (maternity cover)
Overview of the role
The Head of Director's Office is a pivotal role supporting the Director of Private Office, Parliament and Legislation (POP) to lead their portfolio effectively. The postholder will run the Director's Office, act as a trusted adviser and maintain strategic oversight of the Director's priorities, ensuring they have the information, advice and support needed to make decisions and intervene effectively.
The postholder will also lead POP's governance and business management arrangements, ensuring effective coordination across the Director's portfolio and providing grip on workforce, budget, corporate business and organisational priorities. They will work closely with senior leads across POP, CPPL and MPDU to identify emerging issues, manage dependencies and ensure decisions are translated into action.
Key responsibilities
Private office leadership
- Lead and manage the Director's private office, ensuring effective diary management, submission clearance handling and prioritisation of the Director's time.
- Act as the primary point of contact between the Director and senior officials, ministers' private offices, and external stakeholders.
- Prepare briefings and speaking notes for the Director, ensuring these are accurate, timely and appropriately cleared.
- Manage the flow of information to and from the Director's office, ensuring sensitive and confidential matters are handled with discretion.
Supporting group leadership, governance and engagement (CPPL and POP)
- Support the Director in their leadership role across CPPL and POP, ensuring effective coordination of priorities, communications and follow-up actions.
- Own and drive the governance framework for the Senior Management Team (SMT), including setting agendas, coordinating papers, capturing actions and ensuring timely follow-through.
- Work closely with the Ministerial Priorities and Delivery Unit (MPDU) to ensure alignment between group-level governance and tracking and the Director's oversight of ministerial priority delivery, maintaining a clear boundary between the two functions: the Head of Director's Office is responsible for group business trackers, budgets and SMT governance, while delivery assurance and performance tracking against ministerial priorities sits with the MPDU.
- Ensure decisions and discussions from SMT and other leadership forums are clearly communicated and cascaded across the group as appropriate.
- Design and deliver engagement activity across the group on behalf of the Director, ensuring staff at all levels feel connected to and informed about leadership priorities.
- Build strong relationships with senior leaders and secretariat functions across CPPL and POP to ensure the Director's engagement is well prepared, coordinated and impactful.
- Act as a trusted adviser to the Director on group-wide governance, ensuring structures are efficient, fit for purpose and support good decision-making.
Business operations
- Oversee recruitment and resourcing activity across POP, working closely with the CPPL recruitment team and HR business partners to ensure timely, effective recruitment campaigns and workforce planning.
- Maintain and quality-assure key business trackers, ensuring the Director and senior team have accurate, up-to-date information to support decision-making.
- Support the management of the group's budget, working with CPPL business operations and finance business partners to monitor spend, support planning rounds and ensure appropriate financial governance.
- Oversee Freedom of Information (FOI) requests that are received into the Directorate, ensuring they are answered in a timely and accurate fashion.
- Identify opportunities to improve business processes and ways of working within the Director's office and across the group.
Leadership and team management
- Directly line manage two members of staff within the private office/business operations team, providing clear direction, support and development opportunities.
- Deputise for the Director on operational and administrative matters as required.
Essential criteria
- Proven experience of operating in a private office, senior support or similar high-pressure environment, with excellent judgement and discretion.
- Experience of supporting senior leadership governance structures, such as SMT or board-level forums, including agenda-setting, papers and action tracking.
- Demonstrable experience of business operations management, including recruitment, budgets or performance tracking.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to distil complex information into clear, concise briefings.
- Strong relationship-building skills, with experience working confidently with senior officials, ministers' offices and external stakeholders.
- Ability to manage competing priorities and work at pace, while maintaining accuracy and attention to detail.
- Experience of line management and leading a team.
Desirable criteria
- Experience working within a communications, policy or corporate function in government.
- Experience of working on recruitment or workforce planning.
- Knowledge of government financial and HR processes.
- Project or programme management experience.
Behaviours and success profile elements
- Communicating and Influencing
- Managing a Quality Service
Ways of Working
This role is available on a part-time or full-time basis. This role is being offered as a 12 month loan, to cover maternity leave.
Due to the nature of this role the successful candidate will be expected to primarily work from the office in 102 Petty France.
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 may consider the possibility of making the successful applicant permanent at the end of the loan assignment, should headcount and budget restrictions allow. This will be reviewed at the end of the loan period and is not guaranteed.
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.
Application process
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.
You will be assessed against the Civil service success profiles framework.
Experience
During the application process you will be asked to provide a CV 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.
Candidates Invited to Interview
During the panel interview, you will be asked Behaviour-based questions to explore in detail what you are capable of. The Behaviours that will be covered by the panel are as follows:
- Communicating and Influencing
- Managing a Quality Service
Please also refer to the CS Behaviours framework for more details at this grade: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/success-profiles/success-profiles-civil-service-behaviours#grade-7-and-grade-6-or-equivalent
The interview will also cover strength-based questions. 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 will also be asked to give a short presentation as part of the interview; details of this will be sent to those candidates who are invited for interview.
Interviews are expected to take place in late September 2026.
Contact information
Please do get in touch with Amelia.Prusinski@justice.gov.uk or Annabella.Owen@justice.gov.uk if you would like to know more about the role.
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.
