Policy Adviser

**Details**:
**Reference number**:

- 339336**Salary**:

- £38,732-
- A Civil Service Pension with an average employer contribution of 27%**Job grade**:

- Senior Executive Officer**Contract type**:

- Permanent**Business area**:

- Group: Local Government and Resilience and Communities Directorate: Local Government and Communities incl Integration**Type of role**:

- Policy**Working pattern**:

- Flexible working, Full-time, Job share, Part-time**Number of jobs available**:

- 1Contents

Location

About the job

**Benefits**:
Things you need to know

Location
- Bristol, Darlington, Manchester, WolverhamptonAbout the job

**Job summary**:
The Communities and Integration directorate sits at the heart of government’s aim to level up opportunities for everyone and deliver DLUHC’s goal to establish socially and economically stronger communities. The directorate leads on supporting communities, reducing inequality, tackling social harms and bringing people together.

Working with local partners and other parts of government, we are focused on a number of priorities, including:

- Promoting greater understanding between faith communities and others
- Pioneering communities and social cohesion work
- Tackling hate crime, community tensions and religious hatred
- Promoting societal resilience and tackling social harms
- Developing a transformative programme of counter-extremism work
- Supporting local community spaces including parks and green spaces Many of the issues that the directorate works on can be challenging for communities and our stakeholders.

This area of work sits across three separate divisions - reflecting the growing mission of the directorate and the heightened ministerial interest in these policies, with their strong links to the wider Levelling Up agenda.

The role being advertised will be in the Societal Resilience and Counter-Extremism division. You will be part of a team of committed policy, programme management and engagement experts, operating across a set of high-profile, complex and sensitive policies and delivery programmes.

**Job description**:
You will be joining a friendly, inclusive and hard-working team to drive forward the Community Engagement Review - a complex, sensitive and high-profile project that aims to develop a new policy to guide government’s approach to external engagement, ensuring that this does not include those groups and individuals that actively work against government’s objectives and principles on extremism by inadvertently giving them support, influence and credibility.

This work also encompasses the development of best-practice guidance and training to ensure that community engagement is as meaningful and purposeful as possible.

Specific responsibilities could include:

- Contributing to the design, testing and rollout of the new cross-government engagement principles.
- Taking a leading role in the next phase of our Agile Development Process to develop a new digital due diligence process, to underpin the cross-government engagement principles and help officials make consistent decisions about whether to undertake external engagement or provide funding.
- Establishing relationships with internal DLUHC teams, other government departments and external stakeholders with an interest in community engagement and due diligence to ensure cross-government buy-in for the new cross-government system.
- Providing greater support and advice on due diligence across government.
- Supporting longer-term thinking around how the government’s principles can be operationalised on the ground, how we can build the necessary infrastructure across government and how we can secure the necessary cross-government buy-in for any new system - including targeted support and regular engagement to meet users’ unique needs.
- Supporting the development of our training, best-practice and guidance offer to upskill officials and highlight the importance of using any new system for community engagement and due diligence.

**Person specification**:
You should enjoy making new connections and have the ability to maintain a sensitive approach to establishing and getting the best out of relationships, whilst maintaining impartiality to develop sound policy advice. The nature of this work can be challenging, particularly when grappling with complex and sensitive issues, such as freedom of expression and extremist behaviours.

Our teams are committed to prioritising our mental and emotional health, which requires open communication, honest self-reflection and an empathetic approach both to our work and to one another. You should be responsible for your own personal resilience, supported by the team as a whole, and able to put practices in place to ensure that you can deliver high-quality work at pace while also looking after yourself.

**Essential criteria**:

- Have good strategic thinking and solution finding skills and the ability to engage with both the detail and the big picture - a