Public Inquiry Lead

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

- 347083**Salary**:

- £75,000-
**Job grade**:

- SCS Pay Band 1**Contract type**:

- Permanent**Business area**:

- DWP - Change and Resilience Group**Type of role**:

- Project Delivery**Working pattern**:

- Full-time**Number of jobs available**:

- 1Contents

Location

About the job

**Benefits**:
Things you need to know

Location
- Birmingham, Blackpool, Cardiff, Glasgow, Leeds, London, Manchester, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, SheffieldAbout the job

**Job summary**:
**Are you a confident leader who has the ability to translate strategy into action?**

DWP as a government department touches on a wide range of policy and public services. With a growing number of inquiries having relevance to the department, DWP established a Public Inquires team in Summer 2022 as a direct response to the Covid Inquiry. The team has provided comprehensive evidence of DWP’s response and supported relevant witnesses in evidence sessions. As the inquiry shifts its focus on to the Governments economic response the focus on DWP will grow and leading DWP though this period is the main focus of this role.

In establishing the team, we have identified a range of other inquiries where DWP has an interest and have brought our approach to these together under this role and team. This is a high-profile role with considerable engagement with ministers and our most senior officials. You will have to represent the whole department, so an understanding of its business is critical. All while leading a team, implementing an IT project and managing the contract with our legal team.

Find out more about DWP from our colleagues.

**Job description**:
Key responsibilities are:

- Lead and co-ordinate the delivery of DWP’s obligations to Public Inquiries, with initial focus on the Covid and Horizon Inquiries
- Engage with senior colleagues across Government to ensure common issues are identified and rectified, and appropriate resource shared
- Engage with internal and external stakeholders to identify and safeguard evidence relevant to the Inquiry, ensuring that supporting technology is effective
- Support stakeholders and witnesses, including Ministers and senior stakeholders, to prepare evidence and statements for inquiries
- Work closely with legal colleagues, including DWP’s King’s Counsel and the Government Legal Department, to ensure that legal obligations are met and risks managed
- Act as the primary interface between DWP, Ministers and Legal colleagues to promote a co-ordinated approach;
- Ensure that emerging findings and lessons learned are shared with relevant parts of DWP and acted upon to drive increased resilience;
- Lead the DWP Inquiry response team, including supporting development and maintaining a focus on wellbeing and inclusion
- Ensure resources are effectively deployed with allocated budget (£5million) spend achieving value for money

**Person specification**:
**Essential Criteria**:

- Working in a senior role on a major Inquiry preferably with experience of leading a cross-cutting incident response
- Working extensively in a legal environment, ensuring that potential issues are identified, appropriate guidance sought, and justifiable decisions made
- Working across organisational boundaries and building an effective senior network of partnerships to work collaboratively
- Confident leadership, with the ability to implement and translate strategy into action, developing new approaches and setting a clear and compelling vision, that their teams can align behind to deliver
- A passion for building high performing teams, creating an inclusive and collaborative learning culture which values diversity and encourages openness, approachability, and sensitivity.
- Excellent communication and influencing skills, including strong experience of working with high profile senior stakeholders across multiple complex organisations

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

- Leadership
- Communicating and Influencing
- Working Together

**Benefits**:

- Learning and development tailored to your role
- An environment with flexible working options
- A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
- A Civil Service pension with an average employer contribution of 27%

Things you need to know

**Selection process details**:

- This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours and Experience.A CV setting out your career history, with key responsibilities and achievements. Please ensure you have provided reasons for any gaps within the last two years;
Three statements (maximum 500 words each) answering the 3 pre-defined questions (below), explaining why you want to work for DWP in this role; how you consider your personal skills, qualities and experience providing evidence of your suitability for the role, with particular reference to the essential criteria in the person specification.
- Tell us about what steps