Ministry of Justice

Job title: Head of Office

Directorate: Operations

About us

HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS) is responsible for the administration of criminal, civil and family courts and tribunals in England and Wales. Our roles support our service users and colleagues, where people and businesses access potentially life-changing justice.  We’re looking for individuals who are committed to public service and want to make a difference in people’s lives in delivering justice. If you’re interested in developing a career with a real purpose, please apply.

HMCTS’ Operations Director has overall accountability for the successful delivery of all operational business in HMCTS, managing: two frontline Directors who are responsible for around 15,000 staff operating from around 350 locations; and three headquarters Deputy Directors delivering operational support functions and legal operations.

About the role

The Head of Office to the Operations Director is a critical role within the Directorate. You will be expected to work effectively with senior colleagues and headquarters teams within HMCTS, and with key partners including Judicial Office, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and wider Government.

The Head of Office role is key in supporting the Director to manage his responsibilities. You will lead a team to provide excellent support to the Director and to support the directorate in meeting all its corporate responsibilities in terms of governance and corporate stewardship.

You will also manage all the issues (including HR, financial and corporate reporting) that inevitably arise in a directorate, ensuring clear information flows, outcome-focused interventions and considering wider impacts on stakeholders (within the directorate and wider HMCTS). You will need to be able to speak on the Director’s behalf, accurately judging his likely approach on issues and assessing when to speak for him and which issues to engage him on personally.

Your role as the Head of Office encompasses several key aspects (but not limited to):

Supporting the Director

• Lead the Director’s office to manage emails, actions, diary and travel arrangements;
• Manage a secretariat function for the Director’s regular meetings and away days with Operations (‘Ops’) senior leaders;
• Attend regular meetings and ad hoc priority calls to record and circulate details of key decisions and actions;
• Progress work on the Director’s behalf or delegating that work to others, including critical issue management where the Director or his deputies are elsewhere;
• Actively support the Director as a member of HMCTS’ Executive Team and MoJ Senior Leadership Group of MoJ, by engaging with other Directors, their offices and senior staffs on high priority and urgent tasks;
• Work with the Director to develop, communicate and maintain plans for Ops’ priorities and business objectives;
• Quality check, draft and co-ordinate the Director’s submissions, papers and correspondence, ensuring these address pertinent issues and are of a high standard;
• Ensure that central commissions and requests are dealt with appropriately and within required timescales, including contributions to the HMCTS Business Plan, Annual Report and Corporate Risk Register;
• Assist the Director when required in HR or line management matters, and in personal, corporate returns.

Leading the team

•  Lead the Director’s Office team to provide an effective and resilient service which supports the Director and enables him to focus on the key issues;
• Plan future staffing, and manage recruitment and selection activity, to ensure the consistent delivery of the service and support to the Director;
• Collaborate with the offices of other operational directors to build and maintain strong working links and to address shared issues jointly.

Supporting Ops’ headquarters directorate

• Ensure key corporate messages are communicated to staff in Ops’ four headquarters (HQ)’ teams;
• With Finance colleagues, complete a monthly review of the Director’s offices budget and a quarterly review of the ‘Ops HQ’ budget;
• Work with the four Ops HQ deputy directors and their offices to ensure corporate commissions are completed;
• Provide a secretariat function for regular meetings between the Director and four deputy directors;
• Oversee and jointly manage the ‘Ops HQ People Group’ in the delivery and communication of activity to support learning and development, wellbeing, talent management and other people-related activity.

External relations and representation of the directorate

• Build and maintain relations with key stakeholders and act as a primary contact, facilitating positive working relationships;
• Ensure issues are dealt with in line with the Director’s view, exercising judgement on their view/approach in their absence.

The post holder will report to the Director. They are required to work in a flexible way and undertake any other duties reasonably requested by line management which are commensurate with the grade and level of responsibility of this post.

Who are we looking for? (Person Specification)

The ideal candidate for this position should demonstrate:

Essential

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Ability to influence across a range of stakeholders, particularly at Senior Civil Servant (SCS) level, and speak with authority taking account of differing perspectives and priorities and dealing with/offering constructive challenge;
• Excellent organisational skills and a proactive nature;
• Able to lead and develop a successful team, and remaining calm, through periods of high pressure and confident when motivating others to deliver at pace;
• Highly motivated, confident, resilient, persuasive, resourceful and prepared to learn quickly to deliver high standards.

How to apply

Application Stage

To apply for this role, please submit a CV and Statement of Suitability (750 words) setting out evidence and examples of how you meet the person specification of the role.

Your CV should

• Be succinct and clear;
• Be factually accurate – You must ensure that any evidence submitted as part of your application, including your CV and statement of suitability are truthful and factually accurate. Please note that plagiarism can include presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own;
• Include your qualifications, highlighting any modules or accreditation relevant to the role;
• Include your relevant experience, providing dates;
• Provide detail – we are interested in how you have used different tools to solve problems.

Your Statement of Suitability should be no more than 750 words and should give us real life examples of how your skills and experience match those needed for this role. This is an opportunity to add depth to the best evidence in your CV. Consider addressing particular points in the person specification requirements and key responsibilities. We recommend following the STAR format.

Interview Stage

If successful at sift, you will be invited to attend an interview on MS Teams where you will be assessed against Civil Service Success Profiles and asked questions in relation to the following Civil Service behaviours:

• Communicating and Influencing
• Leadership
• Working Together;
• Delivering at Pace;
• Making Effective Decisions

Working pattern

The role has sufficient duties and responsibilities for full time working over a five-day week but applications for job sharing or flexible working including slightly reduced hours will be considered on a case-by-case basis, in line with the MoJ’s flexible working and equality policies and taking account of business needs. A working pattern must be agreed before a formal offer of the role will be made.

Travel requirements

There will be a requirement to travel occasionally to any HMCTS site in line with business needs.

Location

The successful candidate will be appointed to a MoJ office location, which may include their nearest court, tribunal, business centre or MoJ office. This will be discussed and agreed during the completion of pre-employment checks.

About our benefits

We reward our people for their hard work and commitment. We have a number of family friendly and flexible working polices that will help you achieve a healthy work-life balance. In addition, we offer a range of employee benefits which include generous annual leave, a highly competitive contributory pension scheme, childcare benefits, season ticket and bicycle loans.

Proud to Serve. Proud to keep justice going.