Head of Strategic Tasking and Planning

Job summary

This is a demanding and high profile SCS Pay Band One role requiring a strong operational focus. The role demands flexibility in responding to evolving requirements and managing resources for high-volume, dynamic operations across all UK Border Force sites and Juxtaposed Ports.

Job description

The post holder will report to the Director of Force Headquarters. The role will be the central point of co-ordination for national cross cutting operational issues for all of BF. It will be responsible for oversight of the strategic direction for the tasking of operational activity undertaken at the border across the Migration and Borders system.

This role will support the recently designed operational structure in Border Force. The post holder will take over leadership of several teams who lead on operational planning and performance reporting, and strategic and tactical national tasking as well as frontline guidance and directives. This directorate will be crucial to effective co-ordination and informed operational delivery across Border Force. The post holder will provide direct support to the Director General in his role as chair of the Strategic Tasking and Tactical Coordination meeting and will need to balance competing demands across operational areas, aligned with Home Office priorities.

The post holder will own the medium-term (4 weeks plus) forward planning for BF operations covering 140 ports across the UK and at Juxtaposed Controls in Europe. Providing oversight to the BF Board and supporting command leads in ensuring that Border Forces operational staff are effectively deployed across all areas. The post holder will also be responsible for working with key partners across the Home Office and wider to ensure Operational readiness to support mutual aid in times of national pressures / critical incidents as they arise. They will need to consider the wider policy, political and reputational impact as a result of any operational modelling.

The Director will also need to work with the wider Department to ensure that Departmental and Ministerial priorities are reflected as part of the national deployment model. They will translate medium-term intent, and operational assumptions, into a model for tactical planning to ensure successful handover to operational delivery.

Person specification

The role will require a high degree of personal resilience and experience of managing frontline operations. It will require the ability to be flexible and adaptable, and willingness to work at pace in a fast-moving and unpredictable environment. Close collaboration with teams across Border Force and Home Office will be required to deliver against changing requirements in what is likely to be a constantly evolving context.

The post holder will be responsible for:

• Strategic planning to enable the live operational delivery of policy, modelling and wider HO / HMG priorities to ensure impact of medium-term border security activity is adequately resourced. They will balance planning priorities against the political imperative, mandated border security activity, Control Strategy and any external forecast pressures.
• As part of the operational modelling for peak pressure periods, the postholder will lead on the operational resource planning for recovery, allowance assurance and optimisation and mid to long term workforce deployment planning between the two Pay Band 2 led sectors- and involving circa 8000 operational staff in the full range of BF operations.
• Provision of senior oversight to the prioritisation of effective operational planning for major and high profile scheduled events and contingencies for unplanned incidents, which may have a significant impact on the Departmental reputation. Act as GOLD Commander for those critical national incidents.
• Oversight of the strategic directive processes and wider operational guidance to direct, inform and co-ordinate operational leadership across all of BF.
• Leading the strategic tasking process- directly supporting the Director General as Chair of that meeting and management of all national Tasking and Co-Ordination Operations across the UK including targeting of illicit cash, drugs and firearms or other contraband entering the UK illegally – tactically planning to ensure effective operations that are data enabled and regularly reviewed.
• Regular liaison with internal and external stakeholders (HMRC, DEFRA, NCA etc) to keep abreast of developing threats and prioritising activity and planning national operations in line with the intelligence assessments and recommendations, factoring in competing pressures on both regional and national resource.
• Leading operational, cross government and stakeholder relationships to drive collaboration at a national and HMG level on modelling and resource planning and setting frameworks and standards for local agreements.
• Leading analysis and lessons learnt exercises from implementation of modelling and stakeholder feedback so that it is fully considered and applied to future planning and implementation.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £81,000, Home Office contributes £23,465 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

• Learning and development tailored to your role
• An environment with flexible working options
• A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
• A Civil Service pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%

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

Essential Criteria

The successful candidate will need to demonstrate their knowledge, experience, capability and behavioural approach to a high standard against the following key criteria:

• Successful experience of strategic and tactical operational delivery across large complex teams.
• Demonstrates strong leadership, bringing together diverse perspectives to achieve a single goal, providing necessary challenge.
• Exceptional verbal and written communication skills to advocate effectively on behalf of Border Force with a diverse range of stakeholders both internally and across government.
• The ability to use data to embed excellent performance at all levels
• The ability to provide and evaluate effective operational planning in a complex and demanding delivery landscape.

Online Application

Please follow the Job Advert instructions on the Civil Service Jobs website to apply online, no later than 23:55hrs on Wednesday 28th January 2026

Provide some basic personal information;

1.A CV - setting out your career history, highlighting specific responsibilities and achievements that are relevant for this role, including details where budgets and numbers of people managed, relevant achievements in recent posts, together with reasons for any gaps within the last two years;

2.A Statement of Suitability – (limited to 1250 words) explaining how you consider your personal skills, qualities and experience, provide evidence of your suitability for the role, with particular reference to the essential criteria in the person specification.

3.Diversity Monitoring - as part of the online application process, you will be asked a number of diversity-related questions. If you do not wish to provide a declaration on any of the characteristics, you will have the option to select 'prefer not to say'. See the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy: 2022 to 2025 (HTML) - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) for more information.

It is essential that in your written application you give evidence, using examples, of proven experience. These responses will be developed and discussed with candidates invited for interview.

Failure to submit both a CV and Supporting Statement will mean the panel only have limited information on which to assess your application against the criteria in the person specification.

For further information on SCS careers and the application process, please see below:

Home Office SCS Further Information

Home Office Senior Leaders - Home Office Careers

Home Office SCS Application Process

Applying for Senior Civil Service vacancies - Home Office Careers

Home Office SCS Use of AI

Artificial intelligence and recruitment , Civil Service Careers

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.This role has a minimum assignment duration of 3 years. An assignment duration is the period of time a Senior Civil Servant is expected to remain in the same post to enable them to deliver on the agreed key business outcomes. The assignment duration also supports your career through building your depth of expertise.

As part of accepting this role you will be agreeing to the expected assignment duration set out above. This will not result in a contractual change to your terms and conditions. Please note this is an expectation only, it is not something which is written into your terms and conditions or indeed which the employing organisation or you are bound by. It will depend on your personal circumstances at a particular time and business needs, for example, would not preclude any absence like family friendly leave. It is nonetheless an important expectation, which is why we ask you to confirm you agree to the assignment duration set out above.

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

Open to UK nationals only.

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 : Sarah Edgcumbe
• Email : ForceHQ-PO@homeoffice.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : SCSRecruitment@homeoffice.gov.uk

Attachments

Candidate Pack - Head of Strategic Tasking and Planning - SCS PB1 Opens in new window (pdf, 952kB)