Head of Area Operations

Job summary

As a head of area operations, you work with the chief crown prosecutor (CCP) to deliver our strategic and operational business model across a geographical area or division. You manage people and finance within your area, and implement and maintain all operational business systems. This includes adherence to national standard operating procedures, the change agenda and the transformation of the service through digital working. You work in partnership with the CCP, head of profession for operational delivery and the director of operational change and delivery, to ensure continuous performance improvement and quality of service. You have direct line management responsibilities as part of this role.

A breakdown of the roles and office locations for the specific areas/divisions currently available is noted below:

• South West – Bristol, Truro & Exeter
• Wessex – Eastleigh & Portsmouth
• Regional Wales Division – Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Birmingham, Cardiff & London
• East of England – Chelmsford, Norwich & Ipswich
• East Midlands – Leicester & Nottingham
• West Midlands – Birmingham
• Special Crime & Counter Terrorism Division – Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Birmingham, Cardiff & London
• CPS Direct – National (any CPS office location)
• Proceeds of Crime Division - Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Birmingham, Cardiff & London
• South East - Canterbury, Guildford, & Brighton

Job description

• You develop the business model, ensuring it is aligned with the wider organisation and addresses the needs of the area and partners.
• You have a shared responsibility with the CCP for managing operational business performance in your area, with a specific focus on people, systems, processes and compliance.
• You are responsible for the delivery, performance and compliance of national standard operating systems, ensuring all staff have the training and development to manage and deliver through new ways of working.
• You nurture and role model a culture where all staff feel engaged, supported and valued. You ensure working practices are inclusive and that our people consistently demonstrate behaviours that reflect our values.
• You secure the trust of stakeholders, senior leaders and peers, confidently providing advice and challenging strategies and decisions when appropriate.
• You make sure all staff are involved in the process of initiating and setting the direction of change, by working with staff groups, forums, and trade unions.

Person specification

To be eligible to apply, you must have:

• experience in operational management

Behaviours

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

• Leadership
• Making Effective Decisions
• Communicating and Influencing
• Seeing the Big Picture

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £76,870, Crown Prosecution Service contributes £22,269 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

Join the Crown Prosecution Service and find your purpose.

Why we work for the Crown Prosecution Service

The Crown Prosecution Service is passionate about ensuring that we're a top performing organisation and a great place to work. We're a committed equal opportunities employer, creating a culture where you can bring your whole self to work, and individuality is truly appreciated.

This culture of inclusion is underpinned by our staff networks covering disability, faith and belief, LGBTQI+, race, social mobility alongside our mental health first aiders programme and wellbeing sessions.

The Crown Prosecution Service commits to offer its employees the following experience.

• You can do impactful, purposeful work that’s making a difference to your local communities.
• You are able to learn and grow, with access to the right opportunities and resources.
• We care about your wellbeing.
• We want you to feel valued, trusted and included.

We also offer the following range of benefits:

• Civil Service contributory pension of up to 28.9%
• 25 days’ leave, increasing to 30 days after 5 years
• £350 each year to spend on personal development
• lawyer training programme for all new prosecutors
• an extra privilege day to mark the King's birthday
• competitive maternity, paternity and parental leave
• flexible working including flexitime, and a family friendly approach to work
• Cycle2Work scheme, employee savings.

Diversity at the Crown Prosecution Service is about inclusion, embracing differences and ensuring our workforce truly reflects the communities we serve. We want you to feel that you belong and can thrive, whatever your background, identity or culture. As a Disability Confident employer, we're happy to support requests for reasonable adjustments and improve your recruitment experience. If you'd like any reasonable adjustments made to our recruitment process, let us know within your application or contact Cara.Thomas@cps.gov.uk

We want to ensure our employees can thrive at work and home and offer a range of support to achieve a balance. This includes flexibility of working hours, flexibility to support caring responsibilities and a flexible approach to deployment. We offer a hybrid working policy. You must spend at least 40% of your contracted hours over a four-week period at court, in an office or another official workplace depending on business need and the kind of work you're doing.

The Crown Prosecution Service also has a range of development programmes to support all aspiring, new and experienced managers with developing the skills, behaviours and knowledge to build their confidence and capability. Our Manager Induction Programme is mandatory for all newly appointed managers. This is a fantastic opportunity to support all our new Crown Prosecution Service managers with the tools required to perform effectively in their roles.

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 and Experience.

Recruitment process

The recruitment process consists of an online application, staff engagement exercise, interview and assessment. Your interview and assessment take place on Microsoft Teams either the week beginning 16 March or the week beginning 23 March 2026. A member of our recruitment team will be in touch with guidance. If you have any queries about this, contact Cara.Thomas@cps.gov.uk

You should keep these weeks free or notify us if you're not available. We'll make every effort to accommodate your date preferences but we can't guarantee it.

CV

Please upload an up-to-date CV which includes:

• three years’ employment and/or academic history
• skills and experience
• achievements
• qualifications

You need to attach your CV as an anonymised document of no more than two A4 pages, to provide the panel with an insight into your work history and experience. We ask that you do not provide personal details which could identify you like name, age, home address.

It’s your responsibility to provide the specified application information in the requested format to ensure that you’re considered for the post. The CV section will be assessed.

If you’re unable to cover three years through employment and/or academic history, you need to provide a character reference for clearance purposes. The reference will be required at onboarding if you’re offered the role.

Personal statement

You must submit a statement of suitability in no more than 1250 words, which demonstrates:

1. The core behaviours Leadership (lead behaviour) and Making Effective Decisions. Please refer to Grade 6/level 4 of the behaviours framework attached to this advert.
2. How you have demonstrated the Crown Prosecution Service or Civil Service values.
3. Your essential experience. You must have experience in operational management roles.

The panel has the right to assess the lead behaviour ‘leadership’ first. If the standard on this behaviour isn’t met, the other behaviours won’t be considered and your application won’t progress. The panel also has the right to raise the minimum standard pass mark. The panel may also refer to the lead behaviour at the interview stage to determine merit order.

Staff Engagement Exercise

If you are successful at sift, you are invited to a staff engagement exercise where a report is generated and sent to the panel ahead of your interview and assessment. The staff engagement exercise takes place the week beginning 23 February 2026 via Microsoft Teams. This exercise will not result in a pass or fail decision. Rather, it is designed to support the panel's decision making and highlight areas for the panel to explore further at interview.

Assessment

We ask you to complete an assessment as part of the recruitment process for this role. We will provide details immediately before your interview.

Interview and assessment

We use behaviours to help us understand your experience, to see if you're a good fit for the role. You are assessed against level 4 in the Civil Service success profiles behaviours framework. We are assessing 4 behaviours at interview / assessment stage

1. Seeing The Big Picture - interview
2. Leadership - assessment and interview
3. Communicating and influencing - interview
4. Making Effective Decisions - assessment and interview

Essential Experience - tested at CV, personal statement, and interview stage

• You must have experience in operational management.

Meet & Engage Sessions

We are holding a series of information sessions – these are live webchats where you can ask us any queries you may have about your application, the process or the role of a head of area operations. You can register here:

Tuesday 20 January, 12pm – 1pm

Link - https://meetandengage.com/amk5i1myv

Thursday 22 January,5pm – 6pm

Link - https://meetandengage.com/amk5i4ef6

Other

This is a full-time post. We do consider requests for flexible, part-time working and job share, always considering the operational needs of the department.

Please note that the CPS is unable to offer visa sponsorship. Therefore, if you require visa sponsorship to work in the UK, you will not meet the eligibility criteria for this role.

Clearance Required

Some of the vacancies are in our casework divisions – these will require Security Check clearance - Regional Wales Division, Special Crime and Counter Terrorism Division and Proceeds of Crime Division. All other posts require Disclosure and Barring Service clearance.

If successfully appointed, you will be asked to complete the Character Enquiry Form and Nationality and Immigration Questionnaire and National Security Vetting Form.

If you're a Crown Prosecution Service member of staff, you won’t need to do a Disclosure and Barring Service check as you already hold this clearance.

The job you are applying for is covered by Article 3(a) of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975, consequently Section 4(2) of that Act does not apply.

For the reasons outlined above you are required to disclose all previous convictions and cautions, including spent convictions. Failure to make a full declaration will result in the withdrawal of an offer of employment if our checks reveal convictions that have not been disclosed.

You must have been a UK resident for at least three of the last five years to qualify for Security Check clearance.

Reserve list

If you are recommended by the selection panel but not appointed to the current vacancy, you will be placed on a waiting list for 12 months. You may be offered another post, should any further vacancies for a head of area operations arise in your chosen location. We may also approach candidates on the waiting list to fill other roles requiring similar knowledge and experience, including in other locations.

Feedback

We only provide feedback if you attend an interview or assessment.

Fraud check

The Crown Prosecution Service provides a Fair Processing Notice to all new applicants after they’ve been successful at interview. These candidates are informed that, as one aspect of pre-employment screening, their personal details – name, National Insurance number and date of birth – are checked against the Internal Fraud Database. We won't employ anyone included on the database unless they can demonstrate exceptional circumstances.

The Strategic Resourcing team in the Crown Prosecution Service will, on behalf of the vacancy holder, inform applicants when they are refused employment because of their inclusion in the Internal Fraud Database.

Civil Service Commission

If you are dissatisfied with the recruitment process and wish to make a complaint, please contact Strategic.Resourcing@cps.gov.uk with your concerns.

If you remain dissatisfied and wish to make a further complaint, please click on the following link to the Civil Service Commission complaints page Recruitment Complaints - Civil Service Commission

Civil Service Commission Recruitment Principles can be found here –

https://civilservicecommission.independent.gov.uk/recruitment/

Details of the Civil Service Nationality Rules are located at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nationality-rules

Candidates will be subject to UK immigration requirements. For the most up-to-date information on the requirements of working in the UK, please go to the UK Visas and Immigration website: https://www.gov.uk/browse/visas-immigration/work-visas

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

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window).

See our vetting charter (opens in a new window).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.The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.

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.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 : Cara Thomas
• Email : Cara.Thomas@cps.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : strategic.resourcing@cps.gov.uk

Attachments

CPS Terms and Conditions 2025 Opens in new window (docx, 258kB)NEW CPS Personal Statement Guidance 2023 Opens in new window (docx, 269kB)