Department of Health and Social Care
Emergency Preparedness Adviser
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Job Summary
In the Department of Health and Social Care, we are proud of our purpose – to enable everyone to live more independent, healthier lives for longer. To achieve this, and create a great place to work, we have four values: we are inclusive, we constantly improve, we challenge, and we are agile. If this sounds like an environment you would like to work in, we would love to hear from you.
The Emergency Preparedness and Health Protection Directorate sits at the heart of DHSC’s work to protect the public and ensure the health and social care system is ready for the risks, threats and incidents that matter most. Our work spans emergency preparedness, national security, health protection, pandemic preparedness, risk, resilience and incident response.
These roles offer the chance to work on some of the most varied, high-profile and important policy areas in government. You could be helping to understand emerging risks, develop policy, strengthen national capabilities, support live incident response, prepare for future pandemics, or work with partners across the health and care system, arm’s-length bodies and wider government.
We are looking for people who are curious, proactive and comfortable working with complexity. You do not need to be an emergency planning expert. You will need good judgement, strong communication skills, an ability to work with others, and the confidence to make progress on both longer-term policy projects and urgent issues when they arise.
Job Description
The Operational Response Centre (ORC) leads DHSC’s work to understand, prepare for and respond to disruptive risks affecting the health and social care system. These roles will help build a picture of the threats and hazards that could affect critical services, assess preparedness, develop policy and plans, and support the Department’s response when incidents occur.
Working in ORC means getting involved across the full emergency management cycle: risk identification, preparedness, contingency planning, response, recovery and lessons learning. The team works closely with partners including NHS England, the UK Health Security Agency, Cabinet Office, Home Office and other government departments.
These roles suit people who enjoy variety, can work at pace, and want to build broad experience in emergency preparedness, resilience and response.
The Operational Response Centre (ORC) leads DHSC’s work to understand, prepare for and respond to disruptive risks affecting the health and social care system. These roles will help build a picture of the threats and hazards that could affect critical services, assess preparedness, develop policy and plans, and support the Department’s response when incidents occur.
Working in ORC means getting involved across the full emergency management cycle: risk identification, preparedness, contingency planning, response, recovery and lessons learning. The team works closely with partners including NHS England, the UK Health Security Agency, Cabinet Office, Home Office and other government departments.
These roles suit people who enjoy variety, can work at pace, and want to build broad experience in emergency preparedness, resilience and response.
Person specification
We are looking for people who are curious, proactive and comfortable working with complexity. You do not need to be an expert in emergency preparedness or pandemic policy, but you will need to be able to learn quickly, work well with others and make progress in a busy and sometimes fast-moving environment.
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Successful candidates will be able to communicate clearly, build effective relationships, manage competing priorities and use good judgement to support policy development, planning, delivery and incident response. You will be a strong team player who is willing to work flexibly across a varied portfolio, including supporting urgent work when risks or incidents arise.
Responsibilities Include
- Coordinate and push forward the health and social care sector’s work on high profile risks such as CRBN, terrorism threats, Energy Disruption and Critical National Infrastructure.
- Support on aspects of cross-government resilience and preparedness work including for the threats and hazards set out in the Government’s National Risk Register.
- Building and maintaining relationships with stakeholders such as the NHS England Resilience team, the UK Health Security Agency, and other Government Departments such as the Home Office.
- Supporting continuous improvement of the emergency response function in DHSC ensuring that DHSC can effectively respond to a range of disruptions impacting on the health and social care sector.
- Participating in emergency preparedness exercises to test sector and government readiness for a range of scenarios.
Due to the nature of the work, the role is based in London and the successful candidate will be expected to regularly attend in person meetings and, if needed during an incident, will need to be able to work in the London office at short notice.
Essential Criteria
- Clear written and oral communication skills.
- Good judgement and problem-solving ability.
- Ability to build strong working relationships with colleagues and a wide-range of stakeholders.
- Ability to manage competing priorities and adapt when circumstances change.
- Confidence working at pace and remaining calm under pressure.
- Ability to learn new topics quickly and apply that knowledge to policy, planning or delivery.
- A proactive, flexible and collaborative approach.
- Willingness to support emergency or incident response arrangements, including working to a shift pattern which may include some out-of-hours or weekend working where required.
- Live within two hours commute by public transport of the London office and have the ability to work in the office at short notice
Desirable
- Experience in policy, operational delivery, emergency preparedness, resilience, health protection, programme delivery or a related field.
- Knowledge of the health and care system, public health, national security, civil contingencies or pandemic preparedness.
- Experience working across organisational boundaries to deliver shared outcomes.
Behaviours
We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:
- Communicating and Influencing
- Making Effective Decisions
Alongside your salary of £39,202, Department of Health and Social Care contributes £11,356 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).
- Learning and development tailored to your role
- An environment with flexible working options
- A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
- A Civil Service pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%
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 (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.
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Selection process details
This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours and Experience.
After submission of the first stage of your application you will be invited to complete a Civil Service Judgement Test. If you successfully pass the test, you will be invited to complete the final stage of the application.
Please complete the online tests as soon as possible (within 24-48 hours is recommended), the closing date for the tests is 23:55 on 31st August 2026. If you fail to complete the online test before the deadline your application will be withdrawn. Guidance for the test will be available when you are invited to take the test. The tests are administered online and accessed via the CS Jobs website.
You will be directed to the Talogy - True Talent – Scheduled Maintenance Window Webpage for online tests during an outage.
Our online test supplier will be performing scheduled maintenance between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. on 23rd August and 4 p.m. and Midnight on 30th August 2026. You will be unable to access tests during this period.
If you are in the middle of a test when the maintenance begins, your progress will be paused. You will be able to resume your test from where you left off via your application centre once the downtime has ended. Please note that you will not be able to launch any new tests while the system is offline.
As part of the application process you will be asked to complete a CV, personal statement and lead Behaviour statement: Communicating and Influencing. Further details around what this will entail are listed on the application form.
Please use your CV to set out your career history, highlighting specific responsibilities and achievements that are relevant for this role. These can be found in the ‘key skills and experience required for the role’ section of the advert.
Please use your personal statement to (in no more than 500 words) outline how you meet the key skills and experience required for the role as set out in the job advert.
Should a large number of applications be received, an initial sift may be conducted using the lead behaviour, Communicating and Influencing. Candidates who pass the initial sift may be progressed to a full sift, or progressed straight to assessment/interview.
Applications will be sifted week commencing: 31/08/2026
Interview date: week commencing 21/09/2026
Interview location: The interview will take place at Virtual.
Further details and interview slots will be released to candidates who are successful at sift.
At interview candidates will be assessed on 2 behaviours – Communicating and Influencing and Making Effective Decisions.
Candidates will be asked to give a presentation which will assess Delivering at Pace. Details of the presentation question will be issued to candidates with the release of the sift scores.
Further Information
- Applicants who are appointable but were not successful in appointment to this vacancy, may be held on a reserve list for up to 12 months, and contacted if similar vacancies become available.
- Any move to DHSC from another employer will mean
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