Child Maintenance Service - Head of Service for Enforcement

Government Recruitment Service; Birkenhead; Hybrid; GBP 60,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job summary

A public service department in the UK is seeking a Head of Service for Enforcement to lead a large team and shape strategic direction amidst ongoing digital transformation. The successful candidate will manage performance, engage teams, and report directly to senior leadership. With an emphasis on cultural change and continuous improvement, this role requires frequent travel across various locations in the UK. This position offers significant responsibility in a dynamic public service environment.

Benefits

Flexible work-life balance

Opportunities for growth and personal development

Qualifications

• Experience leading large teams in fast-paced environments.
• Proven ability to manage strategic change and digital transformation.
• Demonstrated commitment to people engagement and cultural change.

Responsibilities

• Provide leadership to up to 1,000 colleagues across various locations.
• Shape strategic direction and support digital transformation.
• Engage with stakeholders and manage outsourced partnerships.

Skills

Inspirational leadership

Performance management

Transformation and change management

Strategic planning

Resource allocation

Job description

As the UK government’s largest public service provider, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is responsible for welfare, pensions and child maintenance policies.

The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) supports parents who are unable to reach a private financial agreement by ensuring— and when necessary, enforcing— their legal responsibility to contribute to their child’s living costs. Our mission is simple: to get money to children, because it makes a real difference in their lives.

While we’ve made significant progress in transforming our service, we remain ambitious about what more we can achieve for the families who rely on us. CMS is a dynamic and rewarding place to work. Step into any of our service centres and you’ll find passionate, dedicated professionals committed to supporting our customers.

We are proud to foster an inclusive and diverse workforce where everyone can thrive. If you're looking to make a difference, this could be the career for you.

This is a fantastic opportunity to start or grow a fulfilling career in the Civil Service. We offer a flexible work-life balance, along with opportunities for growth, challenge, and personal development.

This is an exciting time to be joining CMS as we continue with our ambitious programme of service modernisation. As Head of Service for Enforcement, you will have a critical role alongside four colleagues in providing strategic leadership with accountability for all aspects of service delivery, people plans and embedding significant change including digitalisation and demand deduction.

The successful candidate will be responsible for the following key tasks:

• Providing inspirational and resourceful leadership to a large team of up to 1,000 colleagues, across several locations through direct line management of Senior Operational Leaders (Grade 7s), in a complex, fast paced operational environment to deliver a quality service. This will include workforce planning, deployment, capability plans and all aspects of performance management to meet service level requirements.
• Leading through a period of accelerated change for the organisation and have an influential role in shaping the strategic direction, communicated to colleagues through our CMS Story – enabling a digital transformation programme that delivers increased efficiency and service improvements and supporting the design and implementation of a new operating model aligning CMS with the DWP 2030 Strategy ambitions.
• Demonstrating visible leadership through a commitment to people engagement and driving cultural change by empowering others to develop, you will be expected to continue establishing a culture of continuous improvement through remote line management across multiple sites.
• As this role covers various locations across the UK, you will be expected to commit to frequent travel and overnight stays.
• Lead accountability for the Enforcement service line with an expectation that in time you will be able to use this when responding to questions from ministers, parliament, Freedom of Information requests, external stakeholders and customer representation groups. The role includes managed outsourced partnerships with external suppliers. You will also have responsibility for the Financial Investigations Unit, CMS’s first line of defence against mis-representation of income and fraud. You will set expectations and role model best practice cutting across the Operational Delivery, Debt and Counter-Fraud professions.
• You will report to the Deputy Director and form part of their Senior Leadership Team. You will also be part of the wider CMS Operational Leadership Team (G6+) with regular interaction with your Head of Service counterparts, Deputy Directors, Director, Minister and business partners including Policy, Service Delivery Optimisation, Digital and Human Resource.