Head of Resilience Planning

Job summary

The Incident Response Team (IRT) is responsible for DCMS’s crisis response planning and preparation. We work on a range of issues across the department and Whitehall - these are only growing as we take on responsibilities around cyber, telecoms, subsea cables and mis/dis-information following the recently Machinery of Government change.

We frequently engage with a range of cross-Whitehall resilience and response fora to represent DCMS interests. We deal with everything from immediate response to small crises through to planning for some of the most significant risks facing the nation.

The team has taken a greater role in resilience across the department in recent months, working with various teams to understand the impacts of different risks, identifying mitigations and developing response plans. This is an exciting time to join the team as the digital responsibilities coming to the department demand a new approach to resilience and updated governance.

Part of the Performance, Projects, Inquiry & Response division in the Project Delivery and Major Events directorate, we are a small team currently located across offices including London, Manchester and Cardiff.

Job description

Leading an exciting, varied and challenging portfolio of work to grow DCMS’ resilience capability, you will building strong relationships across the department and Whitehall. You will develop our approach to resilience as we identify and explore acute risks facing the department. You will explore their impacts and offer frameworks for prioritising accordingly, allowing senior leaders to allocate limited resources effectively. You will then play a key role in building and testing the contingency plans that support resilience to these risks.

Ownership of different risk areas across the team will become clearer as the Machinery of Government changes bed in. You may be responsible for cohering plans across the department for responding to catastrophic impacts on our Critical National Infrastructure. Alternatively, you could be working with teams that are building our approach to resilience in the voluntary and community sector as we seek to maximise the impact of voluntary organisations in response to national crises and improve the UK’s societal resilience.

Working with partners across Whitehall, you will maintain a clear understanding of wider government resilience policy, identifying where this will affect DCMS and preparing responses as necessary. You will represent DCMS’ interests and policy goals at cross-government fora.

As part of the wider resilience and response team, you will be expected to take part in an out of hours duty rota. Overtime and/or TOIL will be available. You will also need to have, or be prepared to go through the process to acquire, Developed Vetting status.

Person specification

The ideal candidate would have the following key skills and experience, please note that desirable skills will only be considered in the event of tied candidates.

Essential requirements:

• Experience in a national security, resilience or crisis management role in government, armed forces, emergency services, NGO or similar.
• Able to work independently and operate across a broad range of policy areas and sector interests, re-prioritising work as the situation demands.
• Confident leading complex work and exercising initiative within a broadly defined area.
• Comfortable assessing information from a range of sources and building a cogent position.
• Can build and maintain effective, impactful working relationships with a range of partners both inside and outside government.
• Confident and capable communicator able to effectively engage senior leaders and produce excellent written work that is clear, concise and well-argued as well as presenting that work at senior level boards.

Desirable skills:

• Familiarity with the Central Government Concept of Operations (Responding to Emergencies) and/or its successor, the Amber book.
• Experience of risk assessment and contingency planning in a resilience context.
• Relevant resilience or crisis management training/qualifications from organisations such as the Cabinet Office’s Crisis Management Excellence Programme, the Business Continuity Institute, the Institute for Strategic Risk Management, the Security Institute etc.

We are running an information session where prospective applicants can find out more about the role. This will be hosted by Jon Ryder, and will take place on: 03 September at 1:30pm

The session will be an opportunity to hear more about the role, the team and wider directorate and the department. It will also be an opportunity for you to ask any questions.

Please register your interest by filling out this Registration form and you will be sent an invitation. Invites will only be sent after this deadline has passed.

Please note that the session will not be recorded and will not focus on the DCMS recruitment process - please direct any queries that you have on this topic (timelines, reasonable adjustments, onboarding etc) to [email removed]

Behaviours

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

• Seeing the Big Picture
• Making Effective Decisions
• Communicating and Influencing
• Delivering at Pace

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £59,234, Department for Culture, Media and Sport contributes £17,160 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).

DCMS values its staff and offers a wide range of benefits to everyone who works here. We’re committed to developing talent, and supporting colleagues to have great careers in our department. To support with that, some of the benefits we offer include:

• Flexible working arrangements and hybrid working - DCMS staff work on a flexible basis with time spent in offices, and time spent working from home
• 26.5 days annual leave on entry, increasing to 31.5 days after 5 years’ service
• A Civil Service pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%
• Access to the Edenred employee benefits system which offers discounts to popular retailers and access to various useful resources such as financial and savings advice
• 3 days of paid volunteering leave
• Up to 9 months maternity leave on full pay + generous paternity and adoption leave
• Staff reward and recognition bonuses that operate throughout the year
• Occupational sick pay
• Access to the Employee Assistance Programme which offers staff 24/7 confidential support and resources such as counselling, debt guidance and management advice
• Active and engaged staff networks to join including the LGBT+, Ethnic Diversity, Mental Health and Wellbeing and Gender Equality Networks
• Exceptional learning and development opportunities that you can explore alongside your day to day work
• Season ticket loan, cycle to work scheme and much more!

Terms and conditions at SCS grades will vary. Those applying for SCS roles should refer to the candidate information pack for more information on terms and conditions.

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