Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Senior Fees and Payments Advisor
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Regular travel across the UK will be required.
Job Summary
We would like to thank you for considering the role of Senior Fees and Payments Advisor within the Scheme Administrator for the packaging Extended Producer Responsibility pEPR scheme (PackUk).
pEPR requires obligated producers across the UK to pay the full costs of managing packaging when it becomes waste (this covers a significant proportion of the UK’s total waste, including for example the wrappers, bottles and cans your food comes in, all the way to the cardboard boxes and plastic bags used to for online shopping orders) Through pEPR. PackUK will provide financial incentives through variation of the fees charged on different types of packaging to encourage sustainable design, production and use of packaging, helping support a transition to a more circular economy, deliver net zero and reduce waste.
pEPR will charge fees worth around £1.5bn per annum and therefore represents a hugely powerful lever to deliver positive environmental change. Revenue raised through pEPR will be funnelled into Local Authorities across the UK to support improvements in their waste management services, providing further benefits.
We are looking to recruit a talented individual to fill a key role within the friendly and supportive fees and payments team in PackUK. This team sits at the heart of PackUK’s work and is responsible for setting fees across all packaging material types and determining how much funding each UK LA receives. This role will focus on Local Authority payments.
Job Description
This is a high profile, fast moving and complex area, with opportunities to put to practice and further improve your leadership, delivery and analytical skills, and regular exposure to senior leaders and decision makers.
You Will:
- Be confident working with analysts and waste management experts, including established operational researchers responsible for the building and operating the Local Authority payments model. This role does not require any formal analytical training, but the candidate must be willing and able to work closely with operational researchers to understand the method used to calculate payments and help to develop ideas for and design improvements to this method (operational researchers will be responsible for implementing agreed improvements in the model via writing code).
- Lead discussions and negotiations with policy and delivery teams in all four UK nations to agree any changes or improvements to the way we calculate payments and ensure that payments are fair across all LAs.
- Lead delivery of tasks required to support analysts and modellers to implement model improvements (e.g. by helping to locate required data, building relationships with external specialists to help test methodologies).
- Advise ministers and senior leaders on decisions relating to payment calculation at key touchpoints (for example each year we will need to obtain ministerial agreement to payments and method used to calculate them). You will need to deliver effective and clear explanation of how calculations are performed to support approval. Operational researchers will support you in this engagement but, together with the team’s LA payments G7, you will need to lead this advice
- Work closely with our financial services supplier to ensure that payments to Local Authorities are made on time and to the correct amounts.
- Working closely with our comms and engagement team, take part in stakeholder engagement with Local Authorities and develop products and materials to help explain the method used to calculate payments to others, including to support readiness, contribute to answering specific queries, manage challenge and collect feedback on improvements to the model.
- Lead on data collection for the LA payments model. Several key data sources for the model are being retired and replaced with new data collection platforms and you will need to work closely with digital leads for these platforms. This may also include supporting procurement and management of science and evidence projects through PackUK’s supplier relations team.
- Be the subject expert to go to for matters related to calculation of LA payments, working closely with colleagues across Whitehall and key bodies. This may include for example giving advice on impact and deliverability of any changes to the underpinning legislation the payment models are based on.
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Person specification
We are looking for an exceptional candidate with a strong record of delivering high quality work in complex, fast paced environments. You will be confident in communicating with stakeholders and supporting LA readiness and engagement with the scheme. You will have strong written communication skills with ability to grasp and distil technical information. You will have strong presentation skills and experience of briefing senior leaders.
Given the highly technical nature of this delivery area, and the need to engage and collaborate with specialists, we encourage applications from candidates with background in technical skills, such as in operational or social research, or science.
We also encourage applications from candidate with significant experience in the waste sector, for instance gained in an industry, consulting or regulatory setting whilst also encouraging candidates with experience in the wider environmental sustainability field to apply to these roles.
Essential Criteria
- Delivering Across Boundaries - The successful candidate will be able to work effectively with different professions and disciplines, particularly evidence (modelling, data, research), policy and digital and be able to work effectively across different levels of seniority and experience.
- Analytically minded – The modelling methodologies used are on the whole relatively simple maths, but the model has a high degree of granularity, with many different data inputs and individual calculations. Successful candidates will be comfortable in working in highly complex environments and with analytical tools and analysis
- Communicating Between the Technical and Non-Technical - The successful candidate will be able to communicate about the model with both technical and non technical stakeholders
- Management of Projects - The successful candidate will be able to help plan and manage across multiple projects and tasks; support seniors to recognise when it is right to move projects and tasks forward and when it is right to stop or pause; and help plan and engage with appropriate experts, stakeholders and approvers at a particular stage in the project.
- Maintaining Momentum - The successful candidate will be able to support optimisation of the delivery flow of projects, tasks and teams; help actively address the most complicated risks, issues and dependencies associated with bundles of work, including where ownership exists outside the team or no clear ownership exists; and identify and suggest innovative ways to unblock issues
- Making Processes Work - The successful candidate will be able to identify and challenge processes including those that are unnecessarily complicated or unhelpful to delivery; help inspect and adapt processes to facilitate smooth and pacey delivery; and support affected teams implement new processes.
Behaviours
We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:
- Working Together
- Leadership
- Delivering at Pace
- Making Effective Decisions
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Alongside your salary of £42,665, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs contributes £12,360 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.
Selection process details
This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours and Experience.
As part of the application process you will be asked to complete a 500 word personal statement and a CV. Further details around what this will entail are listed on the application form.
Should a large number of applications be received, an initial sift may be conducted using the Personal Statement. Candidates who pass the initial sift may be progressed to a full sift, or progressed straight to interview.
Interview
If successful at application stage, you will be invited to interview where you be assessed on Behaviours.
Your interview will be conducted via MS Teams.
Further Information
Location
As part of the pre-employment process for this post, successful candidate(s) will be able to agree a contractual workplace from those locations listed in this advert. The agreed contractual workplace is then the substantive and permanent place of work for the successful candidate(s).
Where the location is ‘National’ the successful appointee should discuss and agree an appropriate contractual location in line with both Defra’s location policy and site capacity, prior to proceeding with pre-employment processes.
The agreed amount of time spent at a workplace for this post will reflect the requirement for Civil Servants to spend at least 60% of their working time in an organisation workplace with the option to work the remaining time flexibly from home. Working time spent at a workplace may include time spent at other organisational locations including field-based operational locations, together with supplier, customer or partner locations. This is a non-contractual agreement which is consistent with common Civil Service expectations.
Travel costs to non-contractual workplaces will be subject to departmental travel and subsistence policies. Travel costs to contractual workplaces are the responsibility of the employee.
The successful candidate is required to carry out all their duties from a UK location, and cannot do so from an overseas location at any time.
Defra includes the core department, APHA, RPA, Cefas and VMD.
Salary
New entrants to the Civil Service are expected to start on the minimum of the pay band. The internal roles rules apply to existing Civil Servants, i.e. level transfers move on current salary or the pay range minimum, transfers on promotion move to new pay range minimum or receive 10% increase. Either case is determined by whichever is the highest.
A reserve list may be held for a period of 12 months from which further appointments can be made.
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