Business Continuity & Resilience Manager - Legal Aid Agency (Ref: 18325)

Job Title & Grade: SEO Business Continuity & Resilience Manager

Contract Type: Permanent

Salary range (depending on location):

National - 42,914-46,182

London - 49,325-53,081

Please note that unless you are currently employed by the Civil Service and are earning more than the minimum above, if successful you will be offered the minimum for the grade depending on your location.

Location: National - Any LAA office

Please note that whilst this role is open to all Civil Servants, you can only apply for London, Cambridge and Brighton offices if you are a current LAA staff member based in those offices. This is due to and in line with the LAA's Location Strategy and the Cabinet Office's Places for Growth Strategy.

40% office attendance is required. That may be at your base location and other offices. Occasional travel to other offices will be required.

Please note, depending on your location, you may be managed remotely and may be the only member of our team in the site.

Minimum Working Pattern:

The post is supported by the MOJ flexible working policy and includes colleagues who work flexibly, remotely, part time or as part of a job share etc.

If you are applying for a part time role, please note that in order to meet business requirements this role requires availability for a minimum of 28 hours. This role requires availability across core business days which includes Fridays.

To meet legal requirements, if you are between the ages 16-18 and you are a successful candidate, you will be required to complete an apprenticeship after your initial on the job training.

The Legal Aid Agency

We are an executive agency of the Ministry of Justice (MoJ). We are responsible for operationally administering the legal aid fund to provide criminal and civil legal aid advice to people in England and Wales .

Our people are at the heart of achieving excellence. Employing around 1,200 colleagues across England and Wales, we feel proud to have some of the best People Survey results in the Civil Service.

Assurance Directorate

LAAs Assurance teams ensure effective governance of the agency through our executive committees and deliver the practices, procedures and processes to provide our Chief Executive with assurance that LAA is appropriately managing risks relating to fraud, error in decision making, financial stewardship, health and safety, information security, data protection and business continuity.

The LAA fully supports smart and flexible working. Assurance staff and the Corporate Assurance, Risk & Secretariat Team are based in multiple locations across England and Wales. Travel will be required as a fundamental part of the role.

Corporate Assurance, Risk and Secretariat Team (CARS)

The CARS team comprises five teams with responsibility for LAA key functions: Health & Safety, Information & Data Security, Business Continuity, Risk and Assurance and Secretariat. The work of these teams collectively strengthens and supports LAAs governance, assurance and risk management processes and provides support to the LAAs senior governance forums including the Board and LAAs Executive Committee.

Job Summary

Business Continuity (BC) ensures the LAA has the organisational resilience to continue operational delivery of legal aid services during disruption, a serious incident or any event that impacts on critical systems, resources or places.

As Business Continuity & Resilience (BC&R) Manager, you will lead on business continuity for the LAA, helping build and embed a strong BC culture. You will be responsible for ensuring that LAA has robust and tested BC plans and contingencies in place for all the critical digital services, operational processes and physical locations that the organisation relies on, to enable continued delivery of its priority services during periods of disruption.

Your work provides assurance to senior leaders, strengthens organisational resilience, and aligns LAAs approach to business continuity management with professional and international standards, HMG BC frameworks and good practice.

The BC&R lead plays a key role in LAA incident management; supporting the Incident Response Team (IRT) and National Crisis Management Team (NCMT) should they need to be convened. You will also act as a one of the primary contacts for MoJ in the event of an incident occurring that affects MoJ systems or sites where LAA is (or may be) impacted, working closely with MOJs Departmental Operations Centre during significant disruptions.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead the lifecycle of Business Continuity planning, ensuring alignment with ISO 22301 principles and the 6 BCI Professional Practices (Policy & Programme Management, Embedding, Analysis, Design, Implementation, Validation)
• Ensure business impact analyses (BIAs) and plans on the BC tool are up to date, risk-focussed, effective and tested
• Monitor, assess and report on incidents affecting LAA operational activity, briefing senior leaders as appropriate
• Maintain records of, and report on, all disruptions to the business
• Anticipating disruption, work closely with Digital and Security partners to ensure disaster recovery, cyber response and operational contingency plans are integrated and deliver an effective response
• Drive continuous improvement by ensuring lessons learned from exercises and incidents are captured, tracked and actioned, and that preventative resilience measures are implemented to guard against future incidents.
• Promote a culture of resilience, raising awareness of BC responsibilities and embedding best practice across the organisation
• Act independently on day-to-day resilience matters, escalating issues with significant impact as required.
• Provide advice and recommendations, including to senior leaders, on resilience implications of strategic and operational decisions.
• Provide advice and recommendations to stakeholders across the organisation on questions relating to BC or resilience, for example around commercial activity.
• Maintain the BC risk register, reporting on changes and emerging risks
• Provide BC reports and updates quarterly or as required as part of wider corporate reporting to LAAs senior management and governance committees.
• Support and take an active role in LAAs Incident Management processes, including in incident planning and prevention and in the activation, co-ordination and operation of incident response processes.
• Serve as the LAAs key contact with MoJ Operations Centre, MoJ Resilience teams, and MoJ Digital in the event of an IT, or service-related incident impacting LAA operations related incident impacting LAA operations related incident impacting LAA operations related incident impacting LAA operations
• Line management of BC&R Officer(s)

Essential Qualifications

Applicants that do not already hold a Certificate or Membership of the Business Continuity Institute (CBCI or MBCI) or an equivalent recognised qualification must be actively working toward this and will be required to obtain this within 12 months of being appointed.

Essential Knowledge, Experience and Skills

• Experience of working in a business continuity or organisational resilience role.
• Knowledge of resilience planning
• Effective problem-solving skills with the ability to reach solutions based on experience
• Ability to communicate effectively and with confidence with staff at all levels, verbally and in writing
• Ability to effectively influence others

Desirable Qualifications

• Certificate or Membership of the Business Continuity Institute (CBCI or MBCI) or an equivalent recognised qualification

Desirable Knowledge, Experience and skills

• Ability to plan and forecast effectively thinking ahead and creating clear plans and priorities
• Understanding of LAA operations such as its digital systems and working processes
• Knowledge of the 6 BCI Professional Practices, the BC lifecycle and an understanding of ISO 22301
• Experience of incident management

Person Specification

You demonstrate strong organisational skills and are someone that remains calm and effective during incidents. You show persistence in ensuring that BC and resilience planning is robust and effective, ...