Deputy Director Strategic Prioritisation & Insight Analysis

HM REVENUE & CUSTOMS; Newcastle upon Tyne; On-site; GBP 81,000; Full time

Job summary

A government tax agency in the UK is seeking a Senior Civil Servant to lead strategic compliance priorities. This role involves managing a team to develop insights that tackle compliance risks, ensuring alignment with corporate objectives. The ideal candidate will possess strong analytical and leadership skills to drive decisions and understand complex data. It’s a full-time position, requiring commitment to at least a three-year duration within a flexible, evolving framework, benefiting from a competitive salary and generous pension contributions.

Benefits

£23,465 Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension contribution

25 days annual leave, increasing to 30 after 5 years

Paid privilege leave for King's Birthday

Inclusive workplace policies

Qualifications

• Strong analytical skills with both quantitative and qualitative information.
• Excellent communication skills for senior and operational support.
• Ability to motivate teams towards objectives.
• Experience in a tax, economic or fiscal policy environment is desirable.

Responsibilities

• Lead the Strategic Prioritisation and Insight team.
• Shape compliance plans for upcoming financial years.
• Develop tools for decision making and insight.
• Create an inclusive team environment focusing on objectives.

Skills

Strong analytical skills

Excellent communication and influencing skills

Ability to work across organisational boundaries

Values-based leadership

Job description

Compliance Strategy Delivery (CSD) Directorate is a small flexible directorate at the centre of the Customer Compliance Group. We are currently finalising an organisation design exercise to consolidate and focus on our core responsibilities.

This exercise has limited impact on the SCS1 roles at a high-level and the roles would be expected to maintain some flexibility. It does mean that part of this role in the rest of 2025-26 and through 2026-27 will be dedicated to building the wider directorate to meet new challenges and managing the change for the team and their stakeholders.

Objectives

• Supporting the implementation of our strategic compliance commitment to deliver: (a) £10bn of additional tax receipts in 2029 to 2030 and (b) shift our compliance approach upstream to "Prevent and Promote" interventions.
• Delivering improved compliance outcomes in the future: (a) developing our approach to close the tax gap further and go beyond £10bn of additional tax and (b) continuing to develop our understanding and supporting others to focus on our future approach to compliance.
• We will shape the Enterprise approach to developing and agreeing compliance plans for 2025 to 2026 and 2026 to 2027 financial year, support colleagues, to understand risks, and embed compliance thinking in our approach.
• We will underpin our approach to delivery by investing in our people: supporting their development, improving the colleague experience, and providing the right business support to meet wider corporate objectives, reporting and risk management requirements.
• Leading the Strategic Prioritisation and Insight (SP&I) team, turning evidence and analysis into the insight needed to set strategic compliance priorities and ensuring that these drive decisions about what we do to tackle our most significant compliance risks and Close the Tax Gap.
• This means understanding data, its strengths and weaknesses, and making judgements about what that means and how it can support decision making. It also means continuing to develop our tools and approach to asking the right questions, improving the evidence available, and refining how we present key choices.
• Developing our approach to strategic prioritisation, setting out clear recommendations to support the CCG Senior Leadership Team and HMRC Executive Committee to set our compliance priorities to Close the Tax Gap.
• Working across HMRC to ensure those priorities are evidence based, building relationships with a wide range of analytical, operational and policy colleagues to understand the information available and synthesise that into actionable decisions.
• Support to colleagues across HMRC, including Accountable Risk Owners and Regimes Owners, to understand the risks they are responsible for managing including understanding longer societal and economic trends, to help prioritise and assess the appropriate approaches to manage those risks.
• Develop our tools to support decision making and insight, including the provision of strategic analysis, and build the evidence base through work with Knowledge, Analysis and Intelligence teams, to establish our key evidence priorities looking across compliance objectives and risks, considering the ease of gathering new data, and understanding how that could impact on CCG activities.
• Lead a small and agile team including analytical and policy capability. Create an inclusive team environment, with a focus on delivering objectives, supporting change and continuous development, encouraging cross-boundary working both across the department and within the Directorate.
• Play an active role in leading the directorate as part of the CSD Senior Leadership team, including taking responsibility for corporate leadership (potentially including things like people group, change lead, or business planning lead) for the Directorate, and providing cover and support to other teams in CSD.
• A Statement of Suitability (no longer than 2 pages demonstrating how your experience meets the essential criteria).

Shortlist

The panel will assess the evidence provided in your CV and statement. Candidates whose applications best meet the essential criteria will be selected for interview.

Assessment

• Individual Leadership Assessment - a combination of psychometric assessments
• Staff Engagement Exercise - a presentation and Q&A with a representative staff group from across HMRC.

Assessments are designed to support the panel's decision making and highlight areas for further exploration at interview and do not result in a pass or fail decision.

Interview

You will attend a panel interview for a more in-depth discussion of your previous experience and professional competence. This will include a 5-minute verbal presentation (further information will be issued in advance).

Interviews are expected to take place virtually via Microsoft Teams.

All Criminal Record Checks applications are considered fairly in accordance with the DBS Code of Practice and the Recruitment of ex-offenders Policy.

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

Assignment Duration

This role has a minimum assignment duration of 3 years. An assignment duration is the period of time a Senior Civil Servant is expected to remain in the same post to enable them to deliver on the agreed key business outcomes. The assignment duration also supports your career through building your depth of expertise.

As part of accepting this role you will be agreeing to the expected assignment duration set out above. This will not result in a contractual change to your terms and conditions. Please note this is an expectation only, it is not something which is written into your terms and conditions or indeed which the employing organisation or you are bound by. It will depend on your personal circumstances at a particular time and business needs, for example, would not preclude any absence like family friendly leave. It is nonetheless an important expectation, which is why we ask you to confirm you agree to the assignment duration set out above.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.

Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window).

See our vetting charter (opens in a new window).

People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality Requirements

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) 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 (opens in a new window).

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.

The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.

Diversity and Inclusion

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).

Eligibility

• Strong analytical skills with an ability to use both quantitative and qualitative information to provide insight, identify key issues or risks, and recommend strategic level approaches to address those.
• Excellent communication and influencing skills, willing to reach clear decisions and recommendations on complex issues and communicate those in a way that both gains very senior support at a strategic level and operational support from delivery colleagues.
• An ability to work across organisational boundaries with analysts, operational and policy colleagues from across HMRC, recognising differing views and approaches, tailoring the approach to drive Enterprise objectives.
• Provide clear direction and support to teams, identifying key stages of work, motivating teams to achieve stretching objectives.
• Strong values-based leadership, creating a culture of honesty and openness around change and identifying different approaches through both support and challenge to support individual and team development.

Desirable Criteria

• Experience of working in a tax, economic or fiscal policy environment would be beneficial.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £81,000, HM Revenue and Customs contributes £23,465 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

Pension

Your Civil Service pension is a valuable part of your total reward and is one of your biggest benefits.

When you join the Civil Service, you get access to the alpha pension with a generous employer contribution of 28.97% and some of the lowest member contributions in the public sector.

Please visit Civil Service Pension Scheme for more information.

Annual Leave and Bank Holiday Allowance

25 days annual leave, increasing to 30 days after 5 years' service (allowance pro-rata for part-time colleagues).

This is complemented by one day paid privilege leave to mark the King's Birthday and is in addition to your public holidays.

Equality, Diversity & Inclusion

The Civil Service values and supports all its employees. At HMRC we want to create great places to work that are welcoming to all - where there is a strong sense of belonging and community.

We embed inclusion in everything we do.

Senior Civil Servants play a crucial role in promoting and maintaining inclusive behaviours, addressing disparities and reporting progress.

Our HMRC equality objectives 2024-2028 describe how we are working to become a more inclusive and representative organisation reflective of our values.