Health and Safety Lead

Job summary

The Home Office works to build a safe, fair and prosperous UK. We achieve this through our work on counter-terrorism, policing, crime, drugs policy, immigration and passports.

The Chief Operating Officer Group works closely with the Home Office’s policy and operational commands to enable us together to deliver the department’s priorities. The group is comprised of different teams and professional functions, including Commercial, Finance, People, Portfolio and Project Delivery, Security, Estates and Information and Digital, Data and Technology.

This role offers the opportunity to shape high‑impact policy at the heart of government. As a senior technical leader, you will use your expertise to influence national policy, drive regulatory reform, and strengthen the Home Office’s approach to health, safety and fire.

The Home Office is seeking a highly motivated, adaptable leader who can operate confidently across complex portfolios, work flexibly with colleagues at all levels, and contribute actively to the senior leadership community. This role is critical in ensuring the safety and health of our colleagues, our operations, and our estates through maintaining compliance with UK legislation.

Your role will enable organisational delivery through exemplary H&S management - providing specialist technical H&S advice and guidance and supporting the H&S team to deliver a core service.

Job description

Duties include but are not limited to:

• Serving as the department’s Health & Safety Technical Lead, acting as the authoritative subject matter expert for workplace safety, facilities safety, and incident/investigation management.
• Driving the integration of health and safety into daily activities by providing clear, authoritative guidance on legislation, policy implementation and compliance, alongside supporting the design and delivery of engaging, business‑relevant training both in person and online.
• Leading and supporting incident, hazard and near‑miss investigations, ensuring lessons learned and corrective actions are embedded across the organisation.
• Supporting organisational readiness for change by managing stakeholder expectations, ensuring compliance with new or emerging requirements, and influencing and collaborating with operational, tactical and strategic leaders to embed strong health and safety behaviours and deliver end‑to‑end business needs.
• Maintaining positive relationships with regulators (including HSE) and internal/external audit functions, ensuring transparency, compliance and continuous improvement.
• Producing high‑quality technical advice, policy input and briefings for Ministers, ExCo and senior officials on complex regulatory and organisational issues.
• Leading all aspects of H&S management information, including first‑aid needs assessments, risk assessments, compliance documentation and other core tasks that demonstrate effective safety management, risk control, role clarity and competency.
• Line managing a team of on the ground H&S specialist advisors — setting clear expectations, building capability and driving high performance — whilst acting as the escalation route for on-the-ground issues, resolving directly with the Department or escalating to the Head of HSF where required.

Working Pattern

Due to the business requirements of this role, it is only available on a full-time basis.

Travel

Please note regular travel, including overnight stays, will be required as part of this role.

Person specification

Essential criteria

You must be able to demonstrate:

• Proven Strategy and Policy professional with experience leading complex strategic or policy portfolios.
• Advanced critical thinking skills, with the capability to evaluate options and present clear, evidence‑based recommendations.
• Excellent stakeholder management skills, quickly building influential relationships across senior and diverse audiences.
• Demonstrable experience of line managing a team; with the ability to empower, lead and develop a small team through demanding and fast‑paced workloads.
• Experience in policy or briefing communications, producing high‑quality analysis, drafting and detailed reports.
• Effective collaborator with a proven track record to build strong professional relationships across a wide stakeholder network.
• Strong risk‑based prioritisation skills, managing high workloads and tight deadlines while balancing strategic organisational priorities with local needs, mediating conflicting agendas, and keeping fire safety central to design and operational decisions.

Desirable criteria

• Proven ability to work collaboratively across policy, communications and engagement teams and producing high-quality written policy papers and submissions for senior stakeholders and COO/Senior Leaders/Ministerial private offices or experience within an Ombudsman, regulatory or similar environment.
• Hold or be working towards or willing to work towards Chartered Membership IOSH.

Qualifications

• Minimum level 5 NEBOSH Diploma or equivalent.

Behaviours

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

• Leadership
• Seeing the Big Picture
• Communicating and Influencing
• Working Together
• Delivering at Pace

We only ask for evidence of these behaviours on your application form:

• Leadership

Benefits

In addition to your salary, a career with the Home Office offers a range of benefits, including:

• A Civil Service pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%.
• In-year reward scheme for one-off or sustained exceptional personal or team achievements.
• 25 days annual leave on appointment, rising with service to 30 days.
• Eight days of public holidays, plus one additional privilege day.
• Where business needs allow, some roles may be suitable for a combination of office and home-based working. This is a non-contractual arrangement where all employees will be expected to spend a minimum of 60% of their working time in an office.
• See more of our benefits on our careers website.

Sign-up on our website to receive emails with information about careers at the Home Office.

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.

This gives us the best possible chance of finding the right person for the job, drives up performance and improves diversity and inclusivity.

We will endeavour to conduct the selection process in line with the dates indicated below, but cannot guarantee that these will not, where necessary, be revised.

1. Application – by 8th July 2026.

As part of the application process, you will be asked to complete:

• CV
• Personal Statement (maximum 750 words).
• Evidence of the Behaviour - Leadership (maximum of 250 words per Behaviour).

Your CV should consist of your career history, qualifications and skills/experience, including any key achievements in each role. Your CV will be scored against the experience required for the role as noted within the essential criteria.

The Personal Statement should be aligned to and demonstrate how you meet the skills and experience set out in the essential criteria, detailed in the job description.

For guidance and information on how to construct your application (CV, Personal Statement and Behaviours), you are encouraged to visit Civil Service Careers website.

2. Sift – 10th July 2026.

The sift will be held on the Personal Statement, CV Lead Behaviour - Leadership as listed in the advert.

Should a high volume of applications be received, an initial sift will be conducted on the Lead Behaviour. Candidates who pass the initial sift will then be progressed to a full sift that will consist of all the remaining elements submitted (Personal Statement and CV). Candidates who fail to meet the minimum pass score for the initial sift will not have their remaining submitted elements scored and will only receive a sift score for that assessed at the initial sift.

3. Interview – 31st July 2026.

If you are successful at sift stage, you will be invited to an interview that will be Behaviours (as listed in the job advert) based questions. All Behaviours listed in the selection process will be scored at the interview.

In addition, candidates will be asked to prepare a 5 minute presentation that will be delivered at interview. The presentation question/scenario will be disclosed closer to the interviews.

The interview will take place on Teams.

For guidance and information on what to expect and how to prepare for an interview, you are encouraged to visit Civil Service Careers.

Problems during the application process

If you experience problems accessing this advert, or you think you’ve made a mistake on an initial application, please contact hocandidates.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk, including the vacancy reference, at least two working days before the vacancy closes. Further information can be found on our website.

Do not create or attempt to submit another application, online test or use a different Civil Service Jobs account to proceed as this would be in violation of the candidate declaration.

Location Preferences

You can select up to twolocations in order of preference. Please ensure that these are locations you are prepared to travel to. If you are offered a role at one of your preferred location(s) and you decline, your application will be withdrawn.

Reserve List

A reserve list may be held for a period of up to 12 months from which further appointments may be made. There is no guarantee that being held on a reserve list will lead to a job offer. Further information can be found on our website.

Breaking Tied Scores

The behaviours have been ranked in order of importance to enable us to differentiate between candidates with tied interview scores.

Reserve lists will be held for each location. Candidates will be appointed in merit order by location.

Standards

All Civil Servants are expected to comply with the Civil Service Code, and its core values of integrity, honesty, objectivity and impartiality.

Additional Security Checks

As well as successfully obtaining UK Security Vetting clearance, candidates will be subject to a range of additional checks. The range of checks carried out will depend on whether you are a current Home Office employee, existing civil servant or an external new entrant as well as the role requirements. The level of Criminal Record Check required for this role is [BASIC]. Further details are included in the Notes to Candidates.

Further Information

In order to process applications without delay, we will be sending a Criminal Record Check to Disclosure and Barring Service /Disclosure Scotland on your behalf. However, we recognise in exceptional circumstances some candidates will want to send their completed forms direct.

If you will be doing this, please advise Government Recruitment Service of your intention by emailing Pre-EmploymentChecks.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk stating the job reference number in the subject heading.

For further information on the Disclosure Scotland confidential checking service telephone: the Disclosure Scotland Helpline on 0870 609 6006 and ask to speak to the operations manager in confidence, or email Info@disclosurescotland.co.uk

Reasonable Adjustments

If a person with disabilities is at a substantial disadvantage compared to a non-disabled person, we have a duty to make reasonable changes to our processes.

If you need a change to be made so that you can make your application, you should:

• Contact Government Recruitment Service via HOrecruitment.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk as soon as possible before the closing date to discuss your needs

• Complete the “Assistance Required” section in the “Additional Requirements” page of your application form to tell us what changes or help you might need further on in the recruitment process. For instance, you may need wheelchair access at interview, or if you're deaf, a language service professional

If you are experiencing accessibility problems with any attachments on this advert, please contact the email address in the ‘Contact point for applicants’ section.

Feedback

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 : Home Office resourcing centre
• Email : HORCCampaignTeamCorporateEnablers@homeoffice.gov.uk

Recruitment team

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

Further information

If you feel that your application has not been treated in accordance with the Civil Service Recruitment Principles. and you wish to make a complaint, then contact the Government Recruitment Service via HOrecruitment.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk. If you are not satisfied with the response that you receive, then you can contact the Civil Service Commission.

Attachments

Candidate_Information_v17_April_2026 Opens in new window (pdf, 207kB)2025-11-17 Pre-employment Checking - Document Requirements (V17) Opens in new window (pdf, 231kB)