Area Coordinator, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough

at  Department for Levelling Up Housing and Communities

JOB SUMMARY

The Oxford-Cambridge and East Anglia Team (OCAEA) covers the ceremonial counties of Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk. It is a diverse region, with unspoilt coastlines and rural expanses, co-existing with a range of towns and cities and is home to 5.5 million people. It is a leader in life sciences, ICT, aerospace and advanced manufacturing and is home to two of the world’s most renowned universities. However, it also contains communities with significant deprivation and long-standing challenges. This is an opportunity to get involved with policy and project delivery working across two government departments, DLUHC and DBT. The role will be focussed on Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, but you will also have the opportunity to work with the wider team on a range of policy areas across the whole of this high growth region. The team works with partners to drive growth, regenerate towns and high streets and devolve power and freedoms to local levels, through initiatives such as devolution deals and a range of investment programmes and support policies ranging from freeports to business support, and from levelling up to innovation. We also make sure the voice of our region is heard clearly when decisions are taken by Government so that national policy takes account of our area’s particular needs and opportunities.

JOB DESCRIPTION

The OCAEA Team is part of the Cities and Local Growth Unit (CLGU) which is a joint unit between DLUHC and DBT.
We are the champions of place in Government. We drive economic growth in places across the UK, delivering policy and holding local partners who do this on our behalf to account. We work across Whitehall to inform policy, deliver consensus and drive growth. As HEO Area Coordinator for the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough area, you will already have, or will rapidly develop, an in-depth knowledge of the area’s politics, economy, challenges and opportunities.
The Post - HEO Area Coordinator. As Area Coordinator for the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough team, you will contribute to the team’s expertise on locality and economic growth in the Cambridge and Peterborough area by building and maintaining a strong knowledge of the area, including its politics, economy, challenges and opportunities to support DBT, DLUHC and wider government priorities including economic development, housing, transport and devolution by working with a range of policy officials. You will get involved with a range of stakeholder engagement, policy and project delivery primarily in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough but also working on other roles and responsibilities across the whole of the high growth Oxford to Cambridge and East Anglia region, including supporting Government’s ambitions for Cambridge. You will use your detailed knowledge of the area to work with local partners to enable delivery and provide briefing and advice to Ministers and Senior Civil Servants at pace to inform decision making at the highest level.

You will use this knowledge to deliver a range of responsibilities including:

• Develop mutually productive working relationships in your area with local government officers, business representative organisations, HE/FE and other institutions, particularly on the local growth agenda.
• Work with local partners on the development of their economic development plans and their delivery of funding programmes.
• Support the preparation of high-quality briefing materials tailored for the audience, which will range from team colleagues to Ministers.
• Promote, arrange and support Ministerial and other visits within the area.
• Contribute to a range of internal and external team engagements, including developing agendas, commissioning contributions and making arrangements for a range of meetings. You will also deputise for colleagues when required.
• The OCAEA team works across a range of policy agendas and there will be scope for this post to lead the team’s input into selected areas of national policy development and delivery.

CLGU is committed to the welfare of all our people. We take mental health and work-life balance seriously. We would love to see applications from a diverse range of candidates to join our inclusive team. The post will be based in Cambridge, but we support hybrid and flexible working and actively promote a blend of home, office and external working to suit the needs of the team and post holder. Whilst the post will include time spent out and about in the region and may, very occasionally, involve out of hours working to accommodate travel and meetings, we work as a team to balance our diaries and our lives appropriately.
As mentioned above, the post will be based at our Cambridge office. Our office attendance approach will require at least 60% in DLUHC/DBT workplaces or off-site meetings. Travel and subsistence will not be paid for travel to a base office location.

NATIONALITY REQUIREMENTS

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

WE WOULD STRONGLY RECOMMEND THAT APPLICANTS GET IN TOUCH WITH THE VACANCY MANAGER TO FIND OUT MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THIS ROLE.

As part of our pre-employment checking process we will be using your CV to confirm your job history. Please note that by providing us with your CV you are consenting to us using the information enclosed as part of the checking process.
DLUHC want to bring in a diverse workforce at all levels.
Our application system is designed to remove as much bias as possible from the recruitment system – this means that a hiring manager does not know your name, your details, see your whole application in one go (or have your CV at review stage unless stated otherwise).
At application stage you will be asked to upload a CV document. Unless stated otherwise in the advert, your CV will not form part of the assessment but will be used for information purposes and only shared with the panel at interview stage.
Your answers are randomised and chunked up. This means that each assessor views sets of responses to questions for example all candidates’ responses to ‘Seeing the Big Picture’ rather than seeing a candidate’s full application. The science behind this is that recruitment can be subject to ordering and fatigue effects and we want to reduce this as much as possible.
Most of our campaigns utilise multiple assessors and so it is possible that each of your answers would be viewed by different assessors.

When writing your application, remember:

• The assessor won’t be reading your answers sequentially.
• Do not assume that the same assessors will have read all of your answers.
• If talking about something in your first answer, make sure that you write the second answer as if you had not written the first (and so on!)

WE DO NOT CONSIDER DIRECT CV APPLICATIONS TO OUR RECRUITMENT MAILBOX – YOU MUST APPLY FOR THIS ROLE VIA THE APPLICATION LINK ON CIVIL SERVICE JOBS

Please note that near miss offers may be made at the lower grade to candidates who do not meet the grade criteria for this campaign.

You will use this knowledge to deliver a range of responsibilities including:

• Develop mutually productive working relationships in your area with local government officers, business representative organisations, HE/FE and other institutions, particularly on the local growth agenda.
• Work with local partners on the development of their economic development plans and their delivery of funding programmes.
• Support the preparation of high-quality briefing materials tailored for the audience, which will range from team colleagues to Ministers.
• Promote, arrange and support Ministerial and other visits within the area.
• Contribute to a range of internal and external team engagements, including developing agendas, commissioning contributions and making arrangements for a range of meetings. You will also deputise for colleagues when required.
• The OCAEA team works across a range of policy agendas and there will be scope for this post to lead the team’s input into selected areas of national policy development and delivery