3 x Deputy Director Posts: Deputy Director Cross-cutting, Deputy Director EU Exit Deputy Director Pensions, Savings & Charities - HM Revenue and Customs

Summary

Working directly to the Director of Individual Policy Directorate (IPD), there are three roles available*. All the posts will be active members of the Directorate’s Senior Leadership Team and will have an important role to play in positively building staff engagement and supporting the delivery of the IPD ambition. The roles are;

1. Deputy Director Cross-cutting
2. Deputy Director EU Exit
3. Deputy Director Pensions, Savings & Charities

*If you wish to be considered for more than one role please indicate as such in your application form, along with your preference of location. Candidates applying for more than one role will only be required to attend one formal interview as part of the selection process.

HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) is one of the UK’s biggest and most vital organisations. We collect in excess of £600 billion a year in revenue from our 50 million customers from across the UK to pay for the UK’s public services and help families and individuals with targeted financial support.

As part of the Customer, Strategy and Tax Design group, the Individuals Policy Directorate (IPD) brings together all the policy and technical aspects of taxes and benefits for tens of millions of customers. We are responsible for the two largest UK taxes, Income Tax and National Insurance contributions, which together brought in £330bn in 2018/19. Our aim is to develop a more joined-up, customer-focussed and forward-looking approach to policy making and problem solving, acting on customer insight and information, and building in upstream compliance.

It is an exciting time to be joining IPD as we move in to the next phase of Brexit and deliver on the new Government’s agenda to deliver changes across a number of areas, provide targeted support to the less well-off in society and provide childcare support to enable people to take-up employment.

Job description

1. Deputy Director Cross-cutting

You will lead a team of 30 (based in London, Nottingham & Newcastle) to drive a strong strategy and delivery function that supports IPD policy teams to deliver joined up policy in line with wider departmental interests and HMRC strategic objectives.
The team will challenge and ensure policy teams across IPD; join up and plan ahead; design around customers, build in upstream compliance and reduce demands for customer contact. This will drive performance improvement and influence more innovative policy solutions and ensure these are connected to the Department’s transformation and delivery teams to manage cost and capacity. Working in partnership with IPD and across HMRC, you will lead work to improve our policymaking capability and function, support the Health of the Tax System and maximise opportunities for transformation. You will lead the following teams:
Policy Compliance - Responsible for driving up IPD’s understanding and plans to tackle compliance risks through influencing and challenging the directorate’s policies and implementation and actively managing HMRC Compliance Plan projects across groups.
Policy Impacting and Change - Works closely with policy leads across IPD supporting policy development and recommendations to HMT and ministers. The team bring together experts from across HMRC to work up options and identify the IT and process changes needed to implement policy ideas and to consider the cost and capacity impacts of each policy option. The team work closely with HMRCs transformation programme to maintain a strong understanding of how our IT infrastructure and service offering is changing and this ensures they are well placed to support and advise policy makers. The team provides the link between policy teams and the process and delivery teams who implement and deliver policy changes.

Responsibilities include:

• Driving measurable improvement in policy making through working collaboratively and supportively with the policy community;
• Leading and developing team members to enable them to lead and influence; delivering objectives and working flexibly across work areas as required;
• Ensuring that the Cross Cutting function uses a wide range of evidence and data such as front line and customer insight to identify flaws in the system and making sure change happens as a result;
• Maintaining close relationships with other directorates including Transformation, feeding in requirements and feeding back impacts;
• Leading problem solves to identify root causes of performance issues, involving/supporting policy, compliance and operational owners as required for issue resolution;

2. Deputy Director EU Exit

The EU Exit team of 7 (based in London) in IPD leads the policy and delivery of all Brexit-related issues that affect social security within HMRC – that is National Insurance contributions (NICs), Child Benefit and tax credits, as affected by EU rules.
This is an interesting and challenging leadership role in a team at the heart of the EU exit citizens’ right work. A wealth of planning, legislation and preparations are required to ensure a smooth transition in all scenarios. As well as leading a small policy team, the post holder will be responsible for providing the strategic direction for the project delivering all the operational, communications and business changes needed in readiness for the UK’s exit.
Citizens’ rights under EU exit affects many Departments, and there is significant interaction with stakeholders from across Whitehall.
The team also forms part of the UK formal representation on various EU bodies, so part of the team is responsible for the continued running of these arrangements with the EU and providing steers on EU related litigation on social security co-ordination.

Responsibilities include:

• ensuring the UK is ready when we leave the EU, in respect of social security policy areas within HMRC, providing for a smooth transition for customers and HMRC;
• representation at senior Whitehall meetings on no deal preparations and readiness for engagement with the EU on the future relationship;
• HMRC’s engagement with the EU and Member States on social security co-ordination and on future negotiations;
• engagement with other Departments, particularly the Department for Work and Pensions and Home Office, understanding and influencing their proposed changes, which may affect the delivery of HMRC led policy;
• providing strategic oversight and direction for the policy team, including steers on ministerial and wider handling;
• reporting progress to Ministers, seniors, and central teams and governance bodies in HMRC and across Whitehall;
• engaging and informing externals as needed, either directly through different forums, or via external messaging;

3. Deputy Director Pensions, Savings & Charities

You will lead a team of 15, based mostly in London. For each of your policy areas you will work closely with your HMT policy partners to lead the work of your team to deliver policy changes that reflect the priorities of the Government in your policy areas.
This is a high profile and busy tax policy seat. The policy areas of pensions, savings and charities each involve the complex interaction of various and often competing drivers. These include the provision of cost-effective tax incentives, deliverability of legislation, operational and IT system deliverability, ease of compliance and avoidance proofing, involvement of third party suppliers and intermediaries, large well-represented customer populations and a number of lobby groups with vested interests. The new Government is expected to have significant ambitions in this space.
You will work collaboratively with Technical, Compliance, Operations, Digital and Transformation colleagues to ensure policies are deliverable and support the Department’s Transformation objectives and opportunities.

Responsibilities include:

• Developing strong and effective working relationships with Her Majesty’s Treasury (HMT), Other Government Departments (OGDs), regulators (such as The Pensions Regulator and Financial Conduct Authority) and representative bodies;
• Chairing routine consultative meetings of key business and charity representatives;
• Developing and shaping your team to respond effectively and flexibly to the demands placed on it, ensuring business continuity and knowledge management arrangements are in place;
• Being the Senior Responsible Owner for delivery projects in your policy areas within the Policy Driven Change programme. This includes the current Pensions Online Digital Service, a large and complex project that is delivering a number of key changes over coming years;

Person Specification

Candidates will need to demonstrate:

Essential:

• Strong leadership skills with a proven track record of working and leading through transformational change;
• Role modelling excellent leadership; providing highly visible people leadership, championing engagement, and collective leadership of IPD;
• Extensive recent experience and understanding of working in a fast moving policy environment;
• Ability to manage a wide range of stakeholders, both internally and externally; confidence in dealing with, and influencing senior stakeholders;
• High level strategic thinking skills and the ability to apply customer insight;
• A track record in leading people and driving change. Successful delivery through others;

Desirable:

• Knowledge of the tax and benefits system, experience of tax policy making and an understanding of the Whitehall environment are highly desirable for all roles;
• For the Pensions role, a tax professional background and broad knowledge and experience of direct taxes are highly desirable;
• For the EU Exit role a background in benefits policy making is desirable.