Head of Business Continuity and Resilience

Job summary

Are you an expert in business continuity and incident/crisis management, with the flexibility to respond effectively to incidents and provide out‑of‑hours support when required?

Have you led or significantly contributed to resilience planning, embedding organisational resilience and ensuring it is effectively implemented across an organisation?

Can you investigate complex issues, assess risks, and develop clear, evidence‑based recommendations for senior leaders, Boards, and Committees?

If so, we’d 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.

We’re 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

Job description

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

You will maintain strategic oversight of DVSA’s 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 DVSA’s resilience culture.

In this role, you will oversee the team’s 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 DVSA’s incident management response, triaging incidents and supporting senior leaders in managing and recovering from major disruptions to ensure the continuous delivery of DVSA’s critical services.

Your responsibilities will include, but aren’t 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.

Person specification

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.

Qualifications

Business Continuity Management (CBCI) qualification
You will be required to provide evidence that you hold any essential qualifications/licenses at some point during the recruitment process. If you cannot provide evidence, your application will be withdrawn.

Behaviours

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

• Seeing the Big Picture
• Leadership
• Communicating and Influencing

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £57,515, Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency contributes £16,662 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

Being part of our brilliant Civil Service means you will have access to a wide range of fantastic benefits.

This includes:

• A generous annual leave entitlement
• Attractive pension options with an employer contribution of 28.97%
• Fexible working
• Good career development opportunities
• A variety of career paths
• Inclusive working environments and much more to support a healthy work/life balance

Find out more about the benefits of working at DfT and its agencies (opens in a new window).

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.

How to apply:

Our selection process ensures a comprehensive assessment of each applicant's qualifications, skills, and potential fit within our organisation.

The selection process for this role will be:

Stage 1: Sift of CV and personal statement

Stage 2: Interview

You must be successful at each stage to progress to the next stage.

Stage 1: Sift

At sift, you will be assessed against the following Success Profile elements:

• Experience – you will be asked to provide a CV and personal statement (1000-word count). Please provide evidence of your Experience of the following:

1. Advanced expertise in business continuity management and incident/crisis management, including the ability to respond flexibly and support incident management out of hours.
2. Advanced expertise in resilience planning, with experience of implementing and embedding organisational resilience.
3. 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.
4. 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.

The sift will take place week commencing 15 June 2026

Stage 2: Interview

At interview stage, you will be assessed against the following Success Profile elements:

• Behaviours – Seeing the Big, Leadership and Communicating and Influencing Service.
• Experience – See Role Profile

The interviews will take place week commencing 29 June 2026

This interview will be conducted online via Microsoft Teams. Further details will be provided to you should you be selected for interview.

Further Information

Reasonable Adjustments

As a Disability Confident Leader employer, we are committed to ensuring that the recruitment process is fair, accessible and allows all candidates to perform at their best. If a person with a visible or non-visible disability is substantially disadvantaged, we have a duty to make reasonable changes to our processes.

Complete the “Assistance required” section in the “Additional requirements” page of your application form to tell us what changes or help you might need during the recruitment process. For instance, you may need wheelchair access at an interview, or if you’re deaf, a Language Service Professional.

If you need a reasonable adjustment so that you can complete your application, you should contact Government Recruitment Service via dftrecruitment.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk as soon as possible before the closing date to discuss your needs.

Document Accessibility

This job advert contains links to the DfT Careers website. Our website provides useful guidance and information that can support you during the application process. If you are experiencing accessibility problems with any attachments on this advert or the information on our website, please contact the email address in the 'Contact point for applicants' section.

Further Information

For more information about how we hire, and for useful tips on submitting your application for this role, visit the How We Hire page of our DfT Careers website. You can find detailed information about the recruitment process and what to expect when applying for a role.

If your application is successful but you have been dismissed from the Civil Service, your application could be removed at the pre-employment checking stage depending on the nature of the dismissal.

Pre-employment Checking

Applicants who are successful at interview will be, as part of pre-employment screening, subject to a check on the Internal Fraud Database (IFD). This check will provide information about employees who have been dismissed for fraud or dishonesty offences. This check also applies to employees who resign or otherwise leave before being dismissed for fraud or dishonesty had their employment continued. Any applicant’s details held on the IFD will be refused employment.

A candidate is not eligible to apply for a role within the Civil Service if the application is made within a 5-year period following a dismissal for carrying out internal fraud against government.

All External applicants and current employees of accredited non-departmental public bodies (NDPBs) will be required to undergo a Social Media Check. A Social Media Check is a review of your publicly available online activity, typically across platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and others. The purpose is to identify any public posts or content that could raise concerns for employers, such as:

Hate speech or discriminatory behaviour

Threats or acts of violence

Illegal activity or substance misuse

Sexually explicit material

Extremist views or affiliations

Importantly, this check does not involve hacking into your accounts or accessing private messages. It only considers content you have chosen to make public.

Employers use this kind of screening to help ensure their workplace remains safe, inclusive, and aligned with company values. It’s not about judging your personality or lifestyle—it’s about checking for potential red flags that might affect the role or company culture.

If you have questions or concerns about the social media check, we would be happy to explain in more detail what’s being looked at and how your data is handled securely and fairly.

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.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.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 : Donna Mckinnon
• Email : donna.mckinnon@dvsa.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : dftrecruitment.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk

Further information

If you feel your application has not been treated in accordance with the Recruitment Principles and you wish to make a complaint, in the first instance, you should contact Government Recruitment Services via email: dftrecruitment.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk
If you are not satisfied with the response you receive from the Department, you can contact the Civil Service Commission: Visit the Civil Service Commission website Here

Attachments

Role Profile Opens in new window (docx, 792kB)