Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)
Child Maintenance Service - Operational Resource Planning Leader
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Please note that for candidates requesting to work in Newcastle, this role is based at Benton Park View and will relocate to 1 Pilgrim Place in Newcastle city centre by the end of 2027.
Job Summary
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.
Job Description
This is an exciting opportunity to undertake a high profile, fast paced and influential role at the heart of the Child Maintenance Service (CMS), ensuring effective planning and use of resource across the organisation.
You will lead a team of resource planners and work closely with senior operational leaders and directors to understand current and future resource needs. You will develop robust resource plans, identify opportunities and risks, and support strategic decision-making.
Key Tasks:
- Provide strong, visible leadership to a small team delivering a wide variety of complex tasks and overcoming challenges, often at pace and under pressure.
- Create a positive environment encouraging continuous improvement and ongoing professional development.
- Support the CMS Senior Leadership Team by leading the development of comprehensive, robust resource plans. Identifying opportunities and risks and making sound recommendations to Senior leaders.
- Drive effective stakeholder engagement through communications with senior leaders, directors and business partners in the wider Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to facilitate positive business outcomes.
- Lead development and delivery of accurate, complex resource reporting, planning and forecasting.
- Analyse, interpret and communicate complex information in a clear and concise way, both in written briefings and verbally, including confident delivery to audiences at Director and Senior stakeholder level.
- Leading discussions, developing recommendations and supporting strategic decision making at a high level.
Person specification
Your personal statement will be assessed against the following essential criteria. Please ensure you provide specific, evidence-based examples that clearly demonstrate how you meet each one.
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Essential Criteria
- A proven track record of utilising strong, visible leadership skills to work with leaders and stakeholders across the organisation to deliver strategic resourcing plans (Lead Criteria)
- The ability to develop and motivate your team to plan and deliver high quality outcomes and continuous improvement.
- Experience leading the development and production of high quality data, reporting and management information to enable accurate and effective resource plans and forecasts.
- Ability to use data and evidence to make sound recommendations aligned to strategic business objectives, identify risks and opportunities and support business outcomes.
- Ability to build exceptional, collaborative, working relationships with a wide variety of business partners and stakeholders.
- Strong influencing and negotiating skills with experience of delivering change and improvement across an organisation.
- Ability to effectively deliver clear and concise written and verbal communications to a high standard, ensuring understanding of complex information and data, for a variety of senior audiences.
- Ability to deliver accurate, high quality work to tight deadlines in a pressured environment.
Behaviours
We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:
- Leadership
- Making Effective Decisions
- Communicating and Influencing
- Changing and Improving
Salary and Benefits
Alongside your salary of £44,447, Department for Work and Pensions contributes £12,876 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.
Working for DWP will include benefits such as learning and development tailored to your role, an environment with flexible working options, a culture encouraging inclusion and diversity.
Annual Leave
23 days annual leave rising with service to 30 days, plus public holidays.
Flexi Time
Access to flexible working hours scheme will be available.
Hybrid Working
This role may be suitable for hybrid working, which is where an employee works part of the week in their DWP office and part of the week from home. This is a voluntary, non-contractual arrangement and your office will be your contractual place of work.
If a hybrid working arrangement is suitable for the role and for you, you will normally be required to spend a minimum of 60% of your contracted working hours from your DWP office.
If you have a disability, caring responsibilities, or other circumstances that may affect your ability to meet the minimum office attendance requirement, please discuss this with us using the contact details in this advert.
Working Hours
The Department’s Contracted Working Hours Are:
- Monday to Friday: 07:45 to 20:00
- Saturday: 08:45 to 17:00
Employees are contracted to work a set number of hours per week within these timeframes.
For full-time employees, this is 37 net hours per week (equivalent to 42 gross hours, including meal breaks).
For part-time employees, the number of hours will be proportionally less, based on their contract.
Employees are expected to work the full number of hours for which they are contracted.
See the Candidate Pack for more of the benefits available to as a Civil Servant.
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.
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Selection process details
This vacancy is using Success Profiles, and will assess your Behaviours, Strengths and Experience.
Eligibility
Visa Sponsorship
Please note that for these vacancies we recommend that applicants seek specialist advice on their eligibility for Visa Sponsorship (if applicable) when considering whether to apply for any role.
We can never guarantee sponsorship, requests will be considered in line with the relevant DWP guidance and Home Office policy in place at the time.
Location
Applicants should only apply for roles where they can reasonably commute to and from their selected home office location daily.
Application Process
Sift
The sift panel will assess your evidence-based statement to evaluate your experience, skills, and knowledge against the essential criteria outlined in the job advert. To progress to the next stage of the application process, you must provide clear and sufficient evidence demonstrating how you meet these criteria.
If we receive a high volume of applications, an initial sift may be conducted using the lead criterion: A proven track record of utilising strong, visible leadership skills to work with leaders and stakeholders across the organisation to deliver strategic resourcing plans. Candidates who pass this initial sift may either proceed to a full sift or be invited directly to interview.
CV
Your CV is for reference/context only and is not scored, put the main content of your evidence and skills in your personal statement.
Interview
The interview will assess your behaviours and strengths.
A 5 minute presentation will also be assessed at interview, further details will be provided when interviews are booked.
For the purposes of the selection process, the Lead Behaviour will be Leadership.
Your interview will be conducted by video (MS Teams).
See the Personal Statement Guidance and Candidate Pack attachments for full details of the application and selection process.
Approximate Campaign Timeline
- Sift Period: 22 - 30 September 2026
- Interviews: 12 - 16 October 2026
- Results/Offers: 21 October 2026
- Security & ID Checks: October / November 2026
- Start Dates: December 2026
Sometimes we might decide to invite all candidates straight to interview without assessing the written application evidence, therefore sift and interview dates are subject to change.
Provisional Offer of Employment
If you receive a provisional offer of employment, please note that the pre-employment checking process can take up to 8 weeks for external candidates. (Refer to the candidate pack for details regarding the required documentation.)
In some cases, a conditional offer may be made. This means you could begin your role before all checks are completed. However, if any of the outstanding checks are unsuccessful, your employment may be terminated.
Further Information
At the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) we value diversity and inclusion and actively encourage and welcome applications from
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