Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)
Ministerial Correspondence Team (MCT)
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Job Summary
The Ministerial Correspondence Team (MCT) works in partnership with colleagues across the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to support the Secretary of State (SoS) and their Ministers in replying to correspondence received from Members of Parliament (MPs) and the public.
As a Drafter in MCT you will be responsible for ensuring correspondence is replied to by drafting an appropriate response using policy contributions, standard lines or Hansard.
Where appropriate, drafters may be asked to support the Gateway or FOI team where appropriate. Drafters are required to draft cases for any Minister in line with business need.
Roles will be allocated following recruitment to ensure the best match of skills to portfolios and to maintain a resilient, high-performing service.
You will manage high-volume, time-sensitive cases; draft complex or sensitive cases; manage redrafts and support colleagues through case-conferencing and constructive feedback.
You will demonstrate excellent written communication skills, producing clear, concise and well-judged drafts for Ministers, Private Office and senior stakeholders.
You will apply strong drafting discipline, ensuring accuracy, factual consistency and high editorial standards across correspondence.
Job Description
- Drafting and submitting for QA correspondence for the Secretary of State and other Ministers to sign, ensuring responses are accurate, clear and consistent with Departmental policy.
- Managing a caseload effectively, prioritising urgent and sensitive items and working to tight deadlines to support delivery against correspondence targets.
- Applying quality assurance checks (including spelling, grammar, style, accuracy, Ministerial tone and clearance requirements) before submission for team leader QA checks
Experience Key Criteria
Candidates must demonstrate evidence of:
- Producing accurate written work to a high standard, demonstrating excellent attention to detail, sound judgement and the ability to communicate clearly and concisely (Lead criterion).
- Experience of drafting for senior or external audiences, or equivalent transferable experience
- Attention to detail and commitment to quality
- Ability to interpret policy, guidance and technical information accurately
- Working at pace in a high-volume environment, effectively managing competing priorities and delivering to challenging deadlines.
- Assessing risk, applying sound judgement and making effective decisions, including knowing when issues should be escalated.
- Experience of handling sensitive, high-profile or politically aware casework.
Behaviours
We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:
- Managing a Quality Service
- Communicating and Influencing
- Delivering at Pace
- Making Effective Decisions
Salary and Benefits
Alongside your salary of £32,137, Department for Work and Pensions contributes £9,310 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.
DWP have a broad benefits package built around your work-life balance which includes:
- Working patterns to support work/life balance such as job sharing, term-time working, flexi-time and compressed hours.
- Generous annual leave – at least 23 days on entry, increasing up to 30 days over time (pro–rata for part time employees), plus 9 days public and privilege leave.
- Support for financial wellbeing, including interest-free season ticket loans for travel, a cycle to work scheme and an employee discount scheme.
- Health and wellbeing support including our Employee Assistance Programme for specialist advice and counselling and the opportunity to join HASSRA a first-class programme of competitions, activities and benefits for its members (subscription payable monthly).
- Family friendly policies including enhanced maternity and shared parental leave pay after 1 year’s continuous service.
- Funded learning and development to support progress in your role and career. This includes industry recognised qualifications and accreditations, coaching, mentoring and talent development programmes.
- An inclusive and diverse environment with opportunities to join professional and interpersonal networks including Women’s Network, National Race Network, National Disability Network (THRIVE) and many more.
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Selection Process
This vacancy is using Success Profiles, and will assess your Behaviours, Strengths, Ability and Experience.
Online Tests
After submission of the first stage of your application, you will be invited to complete the Civil Service Verbal Test. If you successfully pass the test, you will be invited to complete the next stage of the application.
Please complete the online tests as soon as possible (within 24-48 hours is recommended) to ensure you do not experience any technical issue and fail to meet the deadline. The closing date for the application is 23:55 on 20/10/2026. You must have completed the test and submitted your full application in advance of this deadline. Do not leave it to the last minute. If you fail to complete the online test and submit your application before the deadline, your application will be unsuccessful. The test is administered online and accessed via the CS Jobs website. When you are invited to take the test, you will be sent full guidance and a link to practice tests which provide an authentic test-taking experience, so you can understand how the tests work.
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 4pm and 7pm on 11th October 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.
Application & Sift
As part of the application process you will be asked to complete a CV and Personal Statement. The CV is for reference only and will not be scored.
A sift will be carried out using your 750 word Personal Statement.
Your personal statement needs to set out evidence of how your experience meets all the Experience Key Criteria set out above and not the published behaviours listed in this advert.
We are not looking at how much time you have spent in a job, but rather how you have performed. Your Personal Statement must show demonstrable evidence of what you did, how you did it, and what outcome was achieved. This should include the impact of your approach and evidence of your ability to take forward different approaches in different circumstances.
The standards detailed in the Experience Key Criteria are the minimum expectations for the role and only candidates with the strongest evidence will be invited to interview. In the event of a large number of applications, meeting the pass standard for the lead criteria “Producing accurate written work to a high standard, demonstrating excellent attention to detail, sound judgement and the ability to communicate clearly and concisely” will determine if the other criteria are scored. Candidates will have to meet the standard for all criteria to progress to interview.
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Your statement must not exceed 750 words and you are advised to take advantage of the full word count.
Interview Stage
If you are successful at the sift you will be invited to a Face to Face interview at Quarry House, Leeds. We will be interviewing using behaviours and strengths. As part of the interview, we will be including two tasks (to test 2 of the 4 behaviours). Interviews will be face to face only due to the nature of the tasks. The guidance on Success Profiles explains these selection tools. The Behaviours being assessed are detailed in the job advert.
There will be two short desk-tray exercises as part of the interview. Tasks will be aligned to the behaviours ‘Managing a Quality Service’ and ‘Communicating and Influencing’. You will receive instructions for the desk-tray exercise at the start of the interview time and proceed to the full interview after completion.
Application Details
When applying for these roles, you will be required to state in preference order which of the three Policy Group Hub locations you can work from, Leeds, Manchester, or Sheffield. Please be aware these roles can only be carried out in the UK, not overseas, and your office base must be one of the three Policy Group Hubs. Appointments may be made to candidates in merit order based on location preferences and geographical requirements
By indicating your preferred Policy Group hub location(s) in your application you are stating that you are willing to accept a post in any of your chosen hub location(s).
- Quarry House, Leeds, LS2 7UA
- 2 St Peter's Square, Manchester, M2 3AA
- King’s Court, Hanover Way, Sheffield, S3 7UF
The Department is committed to promoting flexible ways of working, whilst enabling the business to operate at maximum efficiency and will expect colleagues to work from a blend of locations, including some time working at home, as required.
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.
Please note that these vacancies are not currently eligible for new applications for Visa Sponsorship on the Skilled Worker route, for any candidates who do not currently have permission to be in the UK as a Skilled Worker where they were sponsored before 4 April 2024, even if relying on tradeable points (including the new entrant tradeable points option) as they are not included in
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