About the job Summary

About the Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS)

Do you care about the safety of products and want to protect people and places? Is your passion to empower consumers to make good and informed choices? Can we use your skills, knowledge and experience to enable UK business to thrive? If the answer is yes, then we would like to hear from you!

We are the Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS), part of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS). OPSS was created to provide dedicated national capacity for product safety while taking forward work on supporting small business growth and implementing the Industrial Strategy vision of simplifying regulation.

We have been given a huge opportunity to shape the future, and how regulation works in the UK and overseas. By our actions, we can improve protections for consumers and the environment, improve business confidence and drive improved productivity in industry that delivers jobs and security.

We are here for the purpose of making regulation work to deliver real world impact. Regulation is a powerful Government tool to address market failures, influence behaviour and promote positive action. Designed and delivered well, regulation can be an enabler of growth, innovation and productivity.

Our Mission is to be a trusted product regulator for the UK.

Our Goal is to be leader of good regulatory practice and a champion of local regulation.

We are currently a departmental Office of BEIS, operating as the national regulator for products. When we were established in January 2018 the then Secretary of State asked us to get started straight away and committed publicly to a consultation on our future status. We are now looking with Ministers and central Government at the case for becoming an independent agency, whether as an executive agency or statutory body.

This post, with the provision of embedded legal advice to OPSS, is central to that journey.

For further information on OPSS please visit www.gov.uk .

Further details on working for OPSS can be found on the OPSS careers website.

Job description

About the Role

The Deputy Director Legal and Regulation will be responsible for a range of accountabilities and activities that will ensure that the Office for Product Safety and Standards operates within an effective legal and regulatory framework. You will lead and shape our regulatory policies and practices as part of our Leadership Team bringing a legal voice to that discussion; help structure processes and delivery and provide advice on regulatory and operational matters.

You will organise additional legal resource as needed as well as building up your own small legal team.
 

Responsibilities

As our new Deputy Director for Legal and Regulation, key responsibilities will include:

• Overseeing the provision of legal advice on all regulatory and operational matters;

• Developing and implementing effective policies and practices that ensure the Office operates in accordance with legal and regulatory requirements;

• Leading and developing effective working relationships with Government Legal Department staff that provide legislation and policy legal advice services to OPSS to ensure a seamless approach to regulatory and policy legal advice;

• Providing advice and oversight of enforcement and prosecution cases, including instructing external Counsel where appropriate;

• Leading a best practice Office approach to data acquisition, processing and sharing, including developing ways to streamline within legal constraints the way organisations working in the product regulation landscape acquire and share data;

• Overseeing the operation of the Office’s complaints and appeals processes and operations and Primary Authority determinations procedures.

You will lead a team based predominantly in Birmingham and London and be responsible for legal processes on all OPSS delivery. You will report directly to Graham Russell, CEO, and will have direct line management responsibility for several G6 Functional Team Leads.

As a key member of the OPSS’s leadership team, you will play an active role in the leadership, management and development of the organisation. We expect all our senior leaders to be:

• Inspiring – about our work and its future
• Confident – in our engagement with others
• Empowering – to allow our teams to deliver

As a departmental office with policy and delivery responsibilities we are working to achieve a supportive, diverse culture that values our staff and the work they do, supports a close engagement with the department but recognises our specific role.

Person Specification

What we are looking for:

To be successful in this role you will need to be an excellent lawyer and leader. In particular, you will need to be able to demonstrate your capability and potential against the following essential criteria:

• Post qualified as a lawyer with extensive experience in public and regulatory law;

• Experience of prosecutions;

• Knowledge of product safety law or the ability to pick up a new subject area at pace and with confidence;

• Knowledge of FOI and data law;

• The ability to communicate complex legal positions and ideas clearly, and with impact, to a wide range of stakeholders, both internally and externally;

• The ability to build and maintain successful relationships at Board level, winning the trust of those who may have differing or conflicting views, and garner the respect and support of your staff, colleagues and counterparts in other organisations;

• The ability to work collaboratively with GLD lawyers advising BEIS and OPSS on related matters;

• The ability to build and maintain successful relationships internally and externally at Board level, winning the trust of those who may have differing or conflicting views;

• The confidence, presence and impact to operate within a complex, highly regulated environment, garnering the respect and support of your staff, colleagues and counterparts in other organisations;

• The ability to network and work collaboratively across a large number of internal and external teams, communicate legal evidence to a non-technical audience;

• Extensive experience of providing visible leadership to support long term strategies, with a proven ability to develop a motivated, engaged and high performing workforce and demonstrate a commitment to diversity and inclusion;

• The commitment to continuous improvement of processes and policies and to ensure relevant policies and procedures are delivered in an efficient and effective way and are applied throughout the organisation in a consistent and compliant manner.

Please take time to read the attached Candidate pack for further information about this role and the recruitment process.

Benefits Benefits

BEIS offers a competitive mix of benefits including:

A culture of flexible working, such as job sharing, homeworking and compressed hours.
Automatic enrolment into the Civil Service Pension Scheme.
A minimum of 25 days of paid annual leave, increasing by 1 day per year up to a maximum of 30.
An extensive range of learning & professional development opportunities, which all staff are actively encouraged to pursue.
Access to a range of retail, travel and lifestyle employee discounts.

Things you need to know Security

Successful candidates must pass a disclosure and barring security check.

Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check.

Selection process details

As part of the application you will required to complete a CV and Statement of Suitability.

1. A CV setting out your career history, highlighting specific responsibilities and achievements that are relevant for this role, including details where applicable of budgets and numbers of people managed, relevant achievements in recent posts, together with reasons for any gaps within the last two years

2. A Personal Statement (no more than 1250 words) explaining how you consider your personal skills, qualities and experience provide evidence of your suitability for the role, with particular reference to the essential criteria in the person specification

Failure to complete both sections (CV and Personal Statement) will mean the panel have limited information on which to assess your application against the criteria in the person specification.

Applications will be sifted to select those demonstrating the best fit with the post against the criteria set out in the person specification. Please ensure you keep this in mind when writing your CV and supporting statement.

Expected Timeline subject to change

At this stage, the expected timetable is:

Sift to be held by: w/c 6th April 2020
Assessments to be held: w/c 13th April 2020
Assessment Location: Birmingham
Interviews to be held: w/c 27th April 2020
Interviews Location: London

Candidates are asked to note the above timetable, exercising flexibility through the recruitment and selection process.

Please note it may not be possible to offer alternative dates for either the assessments or interview.

Expenses incurred by candidates during the recruitment process will not be reimbursed by the Department except in exceptional circumstances and only when agreed in advance.

Full details of the selection and assessment process will be made available to shortlisted candidates once the shortlist has been completed but will include a Staff Engagement Exercise, a Alternative Leadership Assessment, and a Final Panel Interview.

If candidates are required to prepare a presentation for their interview, they will be given at least one week’s notice of the subject.

Candidates invited to interview will be asked to undergo the following assessments:

Staff Engagement Exercise (SEE)

Shortlisted candidates will be asked to prepare and present a 5-minute presentation to a group of staff of varying grades, representative of the business area/organisation where the role will be based. The staff will then ask questions and have a discussion with the applicant for 30 minutes.

The interaction will be witnessed and recorded by an observer who will provide feedback and observations in a written report provided to the final interview panel.

You will need to be flexible about setting aside time in your diary to do this. The presentation topic will be provided to shortlisted candidates.

Alternative Leadership Assessment (ALA)

Candidates will complete two psychometric tests and the profiles/results are interpreted by an Occupational Psychologist (OP).

The OP facilitates a 60 -75 minute phone validation call with the candidate in order to validate and discuss the profiles/results in relation to their career and leadership style. Evidence from the interview and psychometrics is processed and summarised in a written report provided to a final interview panel, covering the main themes and recommending areas for the panel to probe the candidate at interview.

The SEE and ALA will not lead to a pass or fail decision; rather, they are intended to highlight areas of strength and possible concerns which the panel can probe at interview.

Further information

If we receive applications from more suitable candidates than we have vacancies for at this time, we may hold suitable applicants on a reserve list for 12 months, and future vacancies in the Civil Service requiring the same skills and experience could be offered to candidates on the reserve list without a new competition.

In order to process applications without delay, we will be sending a Criminal Record Check to Disclosure and Barring Service on your behalf. However, we recognise in exceptional circumstance some candidates will want to send their completed forms direct. If you will be doing this, please advise Government Recruitment Service of your intention by emailing [email protected] stating the job reference number in the subject heading.

New entrants are expected to join on the minimum of the pay band.

Applicants who are successful at interview will be, as part of pre-employment screening subject to a check on the Internal Fraud Database (IFD). This check will provide information about employees who have been dismissed for fraud or dishonesty offences. This check also applies to employees who resign or otherwise leave before being dismissed for fraud or dishonesty had their employment continued. Any applicant’s details held on the IFD will be refused employment.

If successful and transferring from another Government Department a criminal record check maybe carried out.

Any move to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy will mean you will no longer be able to carry on claiming childcare vouchers.

Applicants who are successful at interview will be, as part of pre-employment screening subject to a check on the Internal Fraud Database (IFD). This check will provide information about employees who have been dismissed for fraud or dishonesty offences. This check also applies to employees who resign or otherwise leave before being dismissed for fraud or dishonesty had their employment continued. Any applicant’s details held on the IFD will be refused employment.

Please note that BEIS does not hold a licence to sponsor visa applications.

BEIS does not offer full home working (i.e. working at home); but we do offer a variety of flexible working options (including occasionally working from home).

Reasonable adjustment

If a person with disabilities is put at a substantial disadvantage compared to a non-disabled person, we have a duty to make reasonable changes to our processes.

If you need a change to be made so that you can make your application, you should:

• Contact Government Recruitment Service via [email protected] as soon as possible before the closing date to discuss your needs

• Complete the “Assistance required” section in the “Additional requirements” page of your application form to tell us what changes or help you might need further on in the recruitment process. For instance, you may need wheelchair access at interview, or if you’re deaf, a Language Service Professional.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Nationality requirements

Open to UK, Commonwealth and European Economic Area (EEA) and certain non EEA nationals. Further information on whether you are able to apply is available here.

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles.

The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.