Head of Business Continuity and Resilience

If so, wed love to hear from you!

The Business Continuity and Resilience Team ensures the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) remains resilient and able to anticipate, respond to, and recover from incidents, issues, and threats.

The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) helps keep Britain moving, safely and sustainably. We do this by helping people through a lifetime of safe and sustainable journeys, helping them keep their vehicles safe to drive, and protecting them from unsafe drivers and vehicles.

Were working hard to:

• Make roads safer
• Improve services for our customers
• Make road transport greener and healthier
• Harness the potential of technology

Find out more about what it's like working at Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency - Department for Transport Careers

As Head of Business Continuity & Resilience, you will provide strategic leadership for DVSAs business continuity and resilience management frameworks, safeguarding the Accounting Officer and Executive. You will ensure the Agencys approach aligns with Civil Service, Departmental, and wider Government standards and best practice.

You will maintain strategic oversight of DVSAs business continuity and resilience risk profile, ensuring frameworks, reviews, and exercising regimes are effective and continuously improved. You will offer expert advice and guidance to senior leaders, supporting organisational insight and strengthening DVSAs resilience culture.

In this role, you will oversee the teams delivery, drive best practice, and ensure compliance with mandatory standards. You will report on performance and assurance to ExCo, ARAC, DVSA Boards and Committees, DfT, and the Cabinet Office.

As a subject matter expert, you will be first point of contact for internal and external business continuity and resilience stakeholders and facilitate DVSAs incident management response, triaging incidents and supporting senior leaders in managing and recovering from major disruptions to ensure the continuous delivery of DVSAs critical services.

Your responsibilities will include, but arent limited to:

• As process owner, lead the development and implementation of a Business Continuity framework, ensuring robust continuity planning, testing, and incident management capability to safeguard critical business functions.
• Lead emergency response and crisis management. As the subject matter expert, act as a trusted advisor during major incidents and ensuring effective facilitation and coordination at Gold and Silver command levels.
• Lead Horizon scan exercises for emerging business continuity and resilience threats and risks, ensuring timely mitigation and escalation.
• Deliver high-quality business continuity and resilience reporting to inform strategic decisions and compliance obligations.
• Lead periodic maturity assessments for business continuity and resilience, producing actionable improvement plans.
• Set the strategic direction for business continuity and resilience service offering, ensuring frameworks, policies, and tools remain fit for purpose.
• Demonstrate leadership by providing influence, direction and guidance to staff to support the delivery of objectives. Establishes a strong direction and a persuasive future vision, managing and engaging with honesty and integrity, and upholding the reputation of the Agency, Department and Civil Service.
• Develop and implement effective communication strategies and training tools to build organisational understanding and capability in business continuity and resilience frameworks.
• Collaborate with Cabinet Office, Treasury, and other Government Departments to interpret and apply best practice, ensuring compliance and consistency in resilience and reporting.

Great line management is important to us as an organisation, and we will equip and support line managers to develop the skills they need. We aim to empower line managers to create teams where people can flourish and deliver excellent outcomes for the public. 

For further information on the role, please read the role profile. Please note that the role profile is for information purposes only - whilst all elements are relevant to the role, they may not all be assessed during the recruitment process. This job advert will detail exactly what will be assessed during the recruitment process.

Required experience:

To be successful in this role you will need to have the following experience:

Advanced expertise in business continuity management and incident/crisis management, including the ability to respond flexibly and support incident management out of hours.

Advanced expertise in resilience planning, with experience of implementing and embedding organisational resilience.

Strong strategic, analytical and problem solving capability, with experience investigating complex issues, assessing risks, and presenting clear, evidence based recommendations to senior leaders, Boards, and Committees.

Deep understanding of regulation, governance, assurance and policy, with experience drafting standards, processes and mechanisms that enable effective monitoring, quality oversight and well judged decision making.

Highly developed influencing, negotiation, and communication skills, with the ability to engage and manage upwards, motivate others, and communicate effectively across all levels, internally and externally.

Exceptional relationship building and interpersonal skills, establishing trusted networks and partnerships within and beyond the organisation.

Strong judgement, adaptability, and continuous improvement mindset, providing authoritative advice at executive level and identifying opportunities to enhance efficiency and ways of working.

Additional Information

Working hours, office attendance and travel requirements

Full time roles consist of 37 hours per week.

Whilst we welcome applications from those looking to work with us on a part time basis, there is a business requirement for the successful candidate to be able to work at least 35 hours per week.

Due to the nature of this role, you will be required to be on call and available outside of normal working hours.

This role is suitable for hybrid working, which is a non-contractual arrangement where a combination of workplace and home-based working can be accommodated subject to business requirements.

The expectation at present is a minimum of 60% of your working time a month will be spent at either your designated workplace (one of the locations cited in the advert) or, when required for business reasons, in another office/work location/visiting stakeholders. Your designated workplace will be your contractual place of work. There may be occasions where you are required to attend above the minimum expectation.