Senior Policy Advisor

SEO

Policy Directorate, Magistrate Uplift Programme

The Policy Directorate, Judicial Legal Services Policy Unit (Magistrate Uplift Division) is recruiting for an SEO Senior Policy Advisor. This campaign is open to current civil servants on level transfer and suitable candidates on promotion.

The role is being offered on Detached Duty for staff within the Ministry of Justice or Loan terms for staff in HMPPS or from other government departments.

Location:

Successful candidates will have the option to be based at one of the following locations:

•102 Petty France, London

•5 Wellington Place, Leeds

•Royal Courts of Justice, London

Occasional travel between the three locations may be required.We offer a hybrid working model, allowing for a balance between remote work and time spent in your base location (102 Petty France, Royal Courts of Justice or 5 Wellington Place Leeds).

Ways of Working

At the MoJ we believe and promote alternative ways of working, these roles are available as:

•Full-time, part-time or the option to job share

•Flexible working patterns

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 requiring the same skills and experience could be offered to candidates on the reserve list without a new competition.

We welcome and encourage applications from everyone, including groups currently underrepresented in our workforce and pride ourselves as being an employer of choice. To find out more about how we champion diversity and inclusion in the workplace, visit: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-justice/about/equality-and-diversity

Salary

Existing Civil Servants will have their salary calculated in accordance with the Department’s pay on transfer / pay on promotion rules.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ)

MoJ is the largest government department, employing over 90,000 people with a budget of approximately £10 billion. Each year, millions of people use our services across the UK - including at 500 courts and tribunals, and 133 prisons in England and Wales.

Further information can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-justice

Background

These are high profile and exciting policy roles, vital to the delivery of the MoJ’s court reform agenda. They sit within the Magistrates Uplift Programme Division – a cross MoJ team developed specifically to grow the size of the magistracy of England and Wales by around 50% over the next 3 years

The role will sit within the Judicial and Legal Services Policy Directorate (JLSP) in MoJ’s Policy Group.JLSP is responsible for managing the relationship between the department, the government and the judiciary and legal services profession. Within the Magistrate Uplift programme, the role will form part of the Judicial Office led work on Magistrate training and retention.

Magistrates are a vital part of the justice system who hear cases in the crime, youth, civil and family jurisdictions.They are essential to delivering the government’s reform priorities, including reducing the criminal court backlog. Following the Independent Review of Criminal Courts and measures set out in the Courts and Tribunals Bill strengthening the resilience and capacity of magistrates’ courts is a critical priority for Ministers and the MoJ Board.

Most criminal cases start and around 95% conclude in magistrates’ courts, making a sufficient, skilled and diverse magistracy essential. The Magistrates Uplift Division leads work to ensure we have the magistrates we need, working closely with the judiciary, Judicial Office, HMCTS, magistrates themselves and key partners such as the Magistrates Association.

Our high-profile programme aims to increase magistrate numbers by 50% to reach 21,000 by 2028/29. It is closely overseen by Ministers and the judiciary, and is structured around three strands:

•Attraction and Recruitment – Ensuring a strong and diverse magistracy, now and in the future, through effective target setting and attraction strategies, streamlining and accelerating recruitment processes, and delivering a high‑quality onboarding experience for new magistrates.

•Retention, Leadership and Training – Enhancing retention by delivering a high quality training, mentoring and appraisal offer, alongside meaningful recognition of magistrates’ contribution, ensuring they feel valued and supported, and enabling long term engagement and development.

•Governance and Business of State – aligning with cross‑government reforms, including those arising from the Independent Review of Criminal Courts, and delivering a cohesive communications and engagement strategy.

This fast-paced programme report is to the Justice Board and Ministers. It offers the opportunity to work at the centre of a major justice reform initiative and contribute directly to ministerial priorities.

The Team

We are a friendly, high-performing cross-functional, cross-organisational team bringing together colleagues and expertise from across MoJ, HMCTS and Judicial Office to deliver this ambitious agenda.

The Role

We are recruiting one SEO post within the Magistrate Uplift Team.The successful candidates will report to the G7 policy lead in the G6 led team covering Magistrate Retention, Leadership and Training. The role will have responsibility for:

•Leading on the policy approach for a workstream, accountable for coherence of the policy position and managing competing priorities to ensure delivery readiness of the workstream.

•Providing and quality assuring high quality advice and briefing to Ministers and senior judges, as well as senior officials.

•Anticipating policy risks (delivery, political, legal, reputational) and actively managing them.

•Establishing professional relationships with a range of stakeholders and collaborating effectively with them to share information, resources and support.

•Representing the policy area in internal and external forums, anticipating challenge and landing messages.

•Operating with limited supervision; making judgments and recommendations Whilst managing multiple dependencies and cross-cutting issues.

•The postholder may also be responsible for line or task management of an HEO.

Skills and Experience

Essential:

•Proven ability in leading and owning key work strands in a fast-paced and high-profile policy area, delivering solutions to complex policy issues.

•Proven ability to deliver at pace, working without close oversight to push work forwards, monitoring progress against milestones and managing competing priorities.

•Excellent communication skills, conveying complex information clearly to a range of audiences, including briefing and advice to ministers, judges or senior officials, ensuring information is clear and appropriately adapted to complexity.

•Confident analysing and using a range of relevant, credible information from internal and external sources to inform and support decisions, making clear recommendations on preferred options to senior leaders.

•Strong stakeholder engagement skills, with evidence of collaborating with internal and external stakeholders to deliver priorities and influence outcomes across organisational boundaries.

•A strong understanding of, and experience working on, policy development and formulation is desirable, but not essential.

Additional Information

Candidates applying from HMPPS should note that the Ministry of Justice does not have the same conditions of employment as HMPPS. It is the candidate’s responsibility to ensure they are aware of the terms and conditions they will adopt should they be successful.

The MoJ is proud to be Level 3 Disability Confident. Disability Confident is the approach through which we offer guaranteed interviews for all people with disabilities meeting the minimum criteria for the advertised role as set out in the job description.

Application process

You will be assessed against the Civil service success profiles framework

You must ensure that any evidence submitted as part of your application, including your CV, statement of suitability and behaviour examples, 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.

Experience

You will be asked to provide your Work History during the application process to assess any demonstrable experience, career history and achievements that are relevant to the role.

You will also be asked to upload a Statement of Suitability of no more than 500 words stating what you would bring to the role, with reference to the Skills and Experience listed above.

Candidates invited to Interview

Please note that interviews will be carried out remotely.

You will be assessed against behaviours at the interview stage where you will be asked to provide examples of how you have demonstrated them. In addition, you will also be asked strength-based questions and to provide a presentation to the panel.

Behaviours:

The following Behaviours will be tested at interview:

•Making effective decisions

•Communicating and Influencing

•Seeing the bigger picture

It may help to use one or more examples of a piece of work you have completed or a situation you have been in and use the WHO or STAR model to explain:

•WHO - What it was? How you approached the work/situation? What the Outcomes were, what did you achieve? Or

•STAR - What was the Situation? What were the Tasks? What Action did you take?  What were the Results of your actions?

Please also refer to the CS Behaviours framework for more details at this grade:

Success Profiles: Civil Service behaviours - GOV.UK

Strengths:

It is difficult to prepare for strength type questions. However, you can think through your answers, focus on your achievements and aspects you enjoy and decide how these can be applied in the organisation and role. While strengths questions are shorter and we do not expect a full STAR response, the panel is interested in your first reaction to the question and information or reasoning to support this. Further information on Civil Service Strengths can be found via this link Success Profiles: Strengths - GOV.UK

Experience:

Candidates invited to interview will be asked to prepare a presentation, the details of this will be shared with you when the invitation goes out.

Interviews are expected to take place in July 2026.

Contact information

Please do get in touch if you would like to know more about the role or what it is like working in our team. Imke Djouadj: imke.djouadj4@justice.gov.uk

Annex A - The STAR method

Using the STAR method can help you give examples of relevant experience that you have. It allows you to set the scene, show what you did, and how you did it, and explain the overall outcome.

Situation - Describe the situation you found yourself in. You must describe a specific event or situation. Be sure to give enough detail for the job holder to understand.

•Where are you?

•Who was there with you?

•What had happened?

Task - The job holder will want to understand what you tried to achieve from the situation you found yourself in.

•What was the task that you had to complete and why?

•What did you have to achieve?

Actions - What did you do? The job holder will be looking for information on what you did, how you did it and why. Keep the focus on you. What specific steps did you take and what was your contribution? Remember to include how you did it, and the behaviours you used. Try to use “I” rather than “we” to explain your actions that lead to the result. Be careful not to take credit for something that you did not do.

Results - Don’t be shy about taking credit for your behaviour. Quote specific facts and figures. Explain how the outcome benefitted the organisation or your area. Make the outcomes easily understandable.

•What results did the actions produce?

•What did you achieve through your actions and did you meet your goals?

•Was it a successful outcome? If not, what did you learn from the experience?

Keep the situation and task parts brief. Concentrate on the action and the result. If the result was not entirely successful describe what you learned from this and what you would do differently next time. Make sure you focus on your strengths.