Business Improvement Support Officer - Legal Aid Agency (Ref: 14305)

Legal Aid Agency

Hybrid

Expires: Expiring in less than 3 weeks

Legal

Flexible

£29,303 - £31,061 per year

Job summary

Please refer to Job Description

Job description

Job Title & Grade:

Business Improvement Support Officer - EO

Contract Type:

Permanent

Salary range (depending on location):

National - £29,303 to £31,061

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 (Excluding London, Brighton and Cambridge)

Directorate: Case Management

Team: Case Management Improvement Team (CMIT)

Working Pattern:

The post is supported by the MOJ flexible working policy and includes colleagues who work flexibly, remotely (as part of hybrid working), 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 demands we need cover for a minimum of 29.36 hours and to cover 4 days of the week.

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.

Reporting to:

Senior Business Improvement Manager

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.

Case Management

The Case Management team is central to the Agency, it is responsible for handling legal aid applications, processing case payments and dealing with correspondence and enquiries received in both Civil and Criminal Legal aid matters. Our dedicated staff ensure that 600,000 new clients access justice each year, while ensuring that legal aid lawyers are paid fairly.

We support all staff in our work, recognising success and promoting a positive and healthy work-life balance.
We have a culture where new ideas are encouraged and appreciated.

Case Management Improvement Team (CMIT)

The Case Management Improvement Team (CMIT) are central to delivering change and improvement across Case Management and the wider LAA. We strive to improve the services delivered by the LAA by improving the relationship we have with providers, reducing operating costs through more efficient ways of working and seeking out opportunities to deliver our services in more modern ways. The Case Management Improvement Team is LAA wide with staff in almost all of our locations.

Job Summary

The job holder will be expected to support the work of CMIT and the business improvement managers in delivering change and improvement initiatives with a particular focus on:
• Support specific improvement work, contributing to the department becoming more efficient and effective across operational work streams. Including supporting our agency wide AI strategy by providing improvement support across a range of innovative work streams.
• Ensuring plans, activity and change benefits are tracked and understood.
• Working to reduce the overall end to end processing times for clients and providers and improving customer service
• Supporting how the CMIT and LAA interact with providers and other stakeholders

Key Responsibilities:

Support the creation of plans for change initiatives, resourcing and capacity updates, monitoring progress of actions for change activities undertaken by the team.
• Overseeing progress of existing plans, prompting actions and reporting on progress to senior leaders
• Preparing and delivering reports, as required, to senior leaders, committee’s, board’s and other stakeholder forums.
• Responsible for the update and maintenance of relevant documents a tracking tools pertaining to the benefit of change activity. Ensuring monitoring of benefit realisation is undertaken and appropriate reports are produced.
• Responsible for the planning of team meetings including meeting logistics, minute taking, tracking, compiling and chasing actions as well as other administration.
• Assist with and maintain risk and issue logs, escalating as appropriate.
• Undertaking data gathering and analysis to support team initiatives and project work providing reports as required
• Taking forward discrete pieces of delivery work as required including drafting communications and liaising with stakeholders

Essential Knowledge, Experience and skills

Established time management skills with the ability to use own initiative to prioritise workload and focus on delivery.
• Established interpersonal skills and the ability to engage with a variety of stakeholders
• Effective communication skills, both written and verbal.
• Established knowledge of Microsoft office.
Desirable Knowledge, Experience and skills
Experience of report writing and minute taking.
• Experience of working on projects.

Person Specification

Enjoys working autonomously and proactively to ensure own, team and organisation goals are met on time and to the required standard.
• Enjoys working with varied data to make accurate and informed decisions.
• Enjoys working independently and as part of a team located across multiple sites.

Assessment approach
Application Process
To apply complete an application based of the following behaviours, each behaviour should be no more than 250 words:

Delivering at Pace
• regularly review the success of activities in the team to identify barriers to progress or challenging objectives
• identify who and what is required to ensure success, set clear goals and areas of responsibility and continually assess workloads considering individual needs
• follow relevant policies, procedures and legislation to complete your work
• ensure colleagues have the correct tools and resources available to them to do their jobs
• have a positive and focused attitude to achieving outcomes, despite any setbacks
• regularly check performance against objectives, making suggestions for improvement or taking corrective action where necessary
• ensure that colleagues are supported where tasks are challenging

Changing and Improving
• regularly review own and team’s work and take the initiative to suggest ideas to make improvements
• give feedback on changes in a constructive manner
• take a positive, open approach to the possibility of change and encourage others to do the same
• help others to understand changes and the reasons they are being put in place
• identify and act on the effects changes are having on your role and that of the team
• look for ways to use technology to achieve efficient and effective results
• consider accessibility needs of the diverse range of end users

Working Together
• develop a range of contacts outside own team and identify opportunities to share knowledge, information and learning
• show genuine interest when listening to others
• contribute to an inclusive working environment where all opinions and challenges are listened to and all individual needs are taken into account
• ensure it is clear that bullying, harassment and discrimination are unacceptable
• offer support and help to colleagues when in need, including consideration of your own and their wellbeing
• change ways of working to aid cooperation within and between teams in order to achieve results

Communicating and Influencing

communicate clearly and concisely both orally and in writing
• take time to consider the best communication channel to use for the audience, including making the best of digital resources and considering value for money
• interact with others in an enthusiastic way
• express ideas clearly and with respect for others
• listen to and value different ideas, views and ways of working
• respond constructively and objectively to comments and questions
• handle challenging conversations with confidence and sensitivity

When submitting an example of a behaviour remember to include the situation, what you did and why, and what was the outcome / result.

Please note that if we have a large number of applications will we do an initial sift on the Changing and Improving behaviour.

Please note that we only require Behaviour answers for your application. The wording on this advert may suggest that an Experience question is also required, however this is not necessary.

Interview / assessment Process
If you are successful through the application stage, you will be invited to an interview via Microsoft Teams where you will be assessed against the following:

Strengths relevant to the role
• The following Behaviours:

Your Experience of implementing, promoting, or understanding diversity and inclusion policy. For this grade/ role we would expect the candidate to demonstrate understanding of the terms Diversity and Inclusion and be able to explain why they are important to them and to where they work. Examples of action they have taken (in or outside of work) to embrace diversity (e.g., increasing understanding) or improve inclusion for others will increase the strength of their answer.

Shortlisting is planned for week commencing 23rd February 2026
Interviews are planned from 13th March 2026

If you would like more information on this opportunity, please contact – Eve McNally – Eve.McNally@justice.gov.uk

Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

As part of our commitment to integrity and transparency, we ask all applicants to ensure that the experiences, achievements, and examples shared in your application are entirely your own.
Please do not use AI tools to fabricate or simulate personal experiences. While AI can assist with formatting and grammar, it must not be used to generate stories, skills, or accomplishments that you have not personally lived or earned.

Our LAA commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain, and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy.

As a Disability Confident organisation, we will offer a guaranteed interview to candidates with a disability who meet the essential criteria for this role. Under the Equality Act 2010 a disability is defined as a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on your ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities which has lasted, or is expected to last, at least 12 months.
If you are responding to a role within the Legal Aid Agency and would like to be considered under the guaranteed interview, please indicate this in your application and let us know of any reasonable adjustments you may require during the sift or later selection processes.
The LAA’s goal is to build an organisation that is open and inclusive and truly values and celebrates the diversity of its workforce. One that reflects and understands the needs of the diverse society we serve. This is regardless of social background, gender, age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, beliefs, disabilities or long-term illness or caring responsibilities.

Reasonable Adjustments

We are committed to ensuring our recruitment process is inclusive and accessible to all. If you have a disability or long-term condition (for example dyslexia, anxiety, autism, a mobility condition or hearing loss) and need us to make any reasonable adjustments to support you through the recruitment process, please let us know by adding the information to the applications system or emailing LAARecruitment@justice.gov.uk after you have applied so that we can discuss options with you.

Complaints procedure

If you have any complaints about this recruitment activity, please share your concerns by emailing LAARecruitment@justice.gov.uk initially. We aim to respond to any complaint within 10 working days.

If you are dissatisfied with our response, we will forward your complaint to the Civil Service Commission, an independent body, for review.

Person specification

Please refer to Job Description

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

Delivering at Pace
Changing and Improving
Working Together
Communicating and Influencing

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £29,303, Legal Aid Agency contributes £8,489 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

Access to learning and development
A working environment that supports a range of flexible working options to enhance your work life balance
A working culture which encourages inclusion and diversity
A Civil Service pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%
Annual Leave
Public Holidays
Season Ticket Advance

For more information about the recruitment process, benefits and allowances and answers to general queries, please click the below link which will direct you to our Candidate Information Page.

Link: https://justicejobs.tal.net/vx/candidate/cms/About%20the%20MOJ

Things you need to know

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, Strengths and Experience.https://justicejobs.tal.net/vx/candidate/cms/About%20the%20MOJ

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

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)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window).The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.

Diversity and Inclusion

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see theCivil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).

Apply and further information

This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) initiative.The Civil Service welcomes applications from people who have recently left prison or have an unspent conviction. Read more about prison leaver recruitment (opens in new window).Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.

Contact point for applicants

Job contact :

Name : SSCL Recruitment Enquiries Team
Email : moj-recruitment-vetting-enquiries@resourcing.soprasteria.co.uk
Telephone : 0345 241 5359

Recruitment team

Email : moj-recruitment-vetting-enquiries@resourcing.soprasteria.co.uk

Further information

Appointment to the Civil Service is governed by the Civil Service Commission’s Recruitment Principles. If you feel a department has breached the requirement of the Recruitment Principles and would like to raise this, please contact SSCL (Moj-recruitment-vetting-enquiries@gov.sscl.com) in the first instance. If the role has been advertised externally (outside of the Civil Service) and you are not satisfied with the response, you may bring your complaint to the Commission. For further information on bringing a complaint to the Civil Service Commission please visit their web pages: http://civilservicecommission.independent.gov.uk/civil-service-recruitm…

https://jobs.justice.gov.uk/careers/JobDetail/14305?entityId=14305

Salary range

£29,303 - £31,061 per year