Senior Personal Assistant

Job summary

As a Senior Personal Assistant for HQ Digital and Information Directorate, you provide administrative support to the Deputy Directors/Senior Leadership Team as allocated by the Assistant Private Secretary through the supply of relevant briefings and organisational backup to ensure that they are fully prepared to carry out their allocated duties.

You liaise with CPS officials and other government departments and agencies on a range of issues as required. You provide advice to senior managers as to the protocols and approaches to be taken on various organisational and procedural issues. You act as the main liaison point for the senior manager (and their team as the occasion demands) with other government departments, agencies, various external organisations and the public.

Job description

Your responsibilities will include:

• You monitor the DD's correspondence, ensuring that appropriate and timely action is taken to resolve issues, respond to enquiries and requests, and in general maintain business continuity.

• You ensure that in the absence of the manager, all briefings, submissions and draft replies produced for or on their behalf meet an equally high standard and are approved and submitted to the appropriate organisation/department in a timely manner.

• You monitor and co-ordinate Parliamentary Questions, Parliamentary Enquiries and Parliamentary Correspondence, adhering to strict deadlines.

• You undertake research and obtain background information / briefings from both internal and external sources, collating this information into a usable format for the manager’s approval.

• You identify key issues and priorities and ensure that these are brought to the attention of the manager at the earliest opportunity; to anticipate problems and future demands on the manager’s time and to resolve these and plan ahead accordingly.

• You proactively provide secretariat support for management meetings with internal or external parties; request and devise agenda items (for manager’s approval) through liaison with relevant parties and own knowledge of business priorities; prepare and distribute briefing papers/packs; take minutes at such meetings and produce a formal written record. To ensure that the minutes are circulated, and that action points are followed up and completed in accordance with agreed set deadlines.

• You organise meetings and conferences, research venues, organise and liaise as necessary with guest speakers and suppliers with a view to achieving value for money.

• You prepare PowerPoint presentations (as required) on given topics/issues by commissioning others for information as well as undertaking personal research and collating relevant information into presentation format.

• You provide appropriate advice and guidance to other managers within the team / Area to ensure that final documents and briefs meet the required standard; to proof-read such documents and make amendments/suggestions to improve content and style, returning them to the author / commissioner for re-draft if necessary.

A copy of the full job description is attached.

Person specification

GCSE and A-Level results won't hold you back. We know that some people find their skills and passions when they leave school, so we won't take these into account.

Behaviours

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

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

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £30,700, Crown Prosecution Service contributes £8,893 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).

Join the Crown Prosecution Service and find your purpose.

The Crown Prosecution Service is passionate about ensuring that we're a top performing organisation and a great place to work. We're a committed equal opportunities employer, creating a culture where you can bring your whole self to work, and individuality is truly appreciated.

This culture of inclusion is underpinned by our staff networks covering disability, faith and belief, LGBTQI+, race, social mobility alongside our mental health first aiders programme and wellbeing sessions.

The Crown Prosecution Service commits to offer its employees the following experience.

• You can do impactful, purposeful work that’s making a difference to your local communities.
• You are able to learn and grow, with access to the right opportunities and resources.
• We care about your wellbeing.
• We want you to feel valued, trusted and included.

We also offer the following range of benefits:

• Civil Service contributory pension of up to 28.9%
• 25 days’ leave, increasing to 30 days after 5 years
• £350 each year to spend on personal development
• lawyer training programme for all new prosecutors
• an extra privilege day to mark the King's birthday
• competitive maternity, paternity and parental leave
• flexible working including flexitime, and a family friendly approach to work
• Cycle2Work scheme, employee savings.

Diversity at the Crown Prosecution Service is about inclusion, embracing differences and ensuring our workforce truly reflects the communities we serve. We want you to feel that you belong and can thrive, whatever your background, identity or culture. As a Disability Confident employer, we're happy to support requests for reasonable adjustments and improve your recruitment experience. If you'd like any reasonable adjustments made to our recruitment process, let us know within your application or contact [email removed].

The Crown Prosecution Service has fixed rates for its Executive Officer grade – a developing rate (the starting salary) and a spot rate (the maximum salary). Applicants typically join us on the developing rate and, after completing a 15-month development period, move to the spot rate if your line manager confirms you’re performing the role to a satisfactory standard.

If you’re joining the Crown Prosecution Service on a lateral transfer from another government department, you should contact us about the impact on your salary and the implications of any time you’ve already spent at that grade before applying or accepting an employment offer. Your salary may be adjusted if your location changes when you join us. This adjustment also takes into account any existing allowances that may have previously been consolidated into your basic pay – there’s no guarantee that you can retain these when you transfer.

We want to ensure our employees can thrive at work and home and offer a range of support to achieve a balance. This includes flexibility of working hours, flexibility to support caring responsibilities and a flexible approach to deployment. We offer a hybrid working policy. You must spend at least 40% of your contracted hours over a four-week period at court, in an office or another official workplace depending on business need and the kind of work you're doing.

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal c