SCS Personal Assistant

Job summary

Do you have excellent communication skills, strong attention to detail, and the ability to manage competing priorities in a fast‑paced environment? If so, this could be the role for you.

We are looking for a highly organised professional, to provide effective support to the Senior Civil Service. You will work closely with the Director's and Deputy Director(s), adapting your approach to meet their needs and liaising confidently with stakeholders at all levels.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is the UK’s largest producer of official statistics, covering a range of key economic, social and demographic topics. These include measuring changes in the value of the UK economy, estimating the size, geographic distribution and characteristics of the population, and providing indicators of price inflation, employment, earnings, crime and migration.

Job description

Embedded within a Directorate Business support team, you will work within a broader Directorate Support function, and you will need to work collaboratively with colleagues from a range of functions to deliver high quality support to the Director / Deputy Director(s) ensuring they are able to meet their key objectives.

The role operates in a fast-paced, pressurised environment and it is key that the successful candidate is comfortable working directly with senior leaders, is able to prioritise effectively, plan ahead and develop good working relationships with a broad range of stakeholders.

There will be an opportunity to work collaboratively and innovatively with other PA and business support colleagues across ONS to develop and share best practice, solve operational issues, and improve processes.

Responsibilities:

• Taking the lead as the Director’s / Deputy Director(s)’s first point of contact, providing comprehensive and proactive inbox(es) management to include:
  • Rationalising and filtering email traffic
  • Responding to requests as appropriate
  • Escalating issues
  • Prioritising work
  • Cascading information
• Proactively and reactively managing the Director / Deputy Director(s)’s diary, ensuring efficient use of their time, managing changes and conflicts (including delegating to their senior leadership team as appropriate), working collaboratively across the organisation negotiating with others as necessary to achieve this.
• Providing the Director / Deputy Directors with all necessary documentation ahead of meetings.
• Facilitating effective communication between the Director / Deputy Director, their senior team, and other stakeholders, both internal and external, as required.
• Working with the business support team, organise and manage the logistics of business meetings, conferences and away days, ensuring that meeting papers are complete and distributed in a timely fashion, as necessary.
• Arranging travel and accommodation in line with ONS policies for the Director / Deputy Director, and submission of travel expenses on their behalf.
• Other ad-hoc administrative tasks as required, which may include covering for other PA absences within the wider Directorate as required.
• Providing other business support to the wider team as necessary, including undertaking short self-contained assignments as required.

Person specification

Essential Skills Criteria:

• Ability to communicate effectively, both in verbal and in written format, and comfortable liaising with people at all levels across the organisation.
• Highly organised with the ability to prioritise work effectively, managing competing demands under pressure to ensure deadlines are met and information is quickly and easily located and understood.
• Ability to flex personal working style to meet the needs of the Director / Deputy Director(s).
• Excellent attention to detail, producing high quality work.
• Experience of using the MS Office suite.

Behaviours

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

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

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £28,138, Office for National Statistics contributes £8,151 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

The Office for National Statistics is part of the Civil Service, and as such we share a number of key benefits with other departments, whilst also having our own unique offerings to support our valued colleagues across the organisation.

Whether you are hearing about us for the first time or already know a bit about our organisation, we hope that our careers site will give you a great insight into the benefits and facilities available to our colleagues, and our fantastic working culture.

Inclusion & Accessibility

At ONS we are always looking to attract the very best people from the widest possible talent pool, and we are proud to be an inclusive, equal opportunities employer. As a Disability Confident Leader we’re committed to ensuring that all candidates are treated fairly throughout the recruitment process.

As part of our application process, you will be prompted to provide details of any reasonable adjustments to our recruitment process that you need. If you would like to discuss any reasonable adjustments before applying, please contact the recruitment team in the first instance.

If you would like an accessible version of any of the attachments or recruitment documents below or linked to in this advert, please contact the recruitment team who will be happy to assist.

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.

Security Clearance

For ONS the requirement for SC clearance is to have been present in the UK for 3 consecutive years immediately prior to applying and the department will consider eligibility by exception on a case-by-case basis. You will be asked to provide information regarding your UK residency during your application, and failure to provide this will result in your application being rejected.

If you are unsure that you meet the eligibility above, please read the information available on Gov.uk on this link, or contact the recruitment email on the advert before applying to discuss, as failure to meet the residency requirements will result in your security clearance application being rejected and any offer of employment being withdrawn.

At the point of SC application, you will need to provide or give access to the following evidence:

• Departmental or company records (personnel files, staff reports, sick leave reports and security records)
• UK criminal records covering both spent and unspent criminal records
• Your credit and financial history with a credit reference agency
• Security Services records.

Application Process

Number of Stages: 2 stage process

Stage 1: Application

Stage 2: Interview

Stage 1 – Application

Assessment at application stage will be based on your CV and the evidence given in the 3 set questions contained in the application form. Your CV should be tailored to demonstrate any skills, knowledge and experience that are relevant to the content of the role however, this will not be scored.

In your application form you are required to answer the questions below using up to 250 words on each answer. As these responses to the questions are scored, we would recommend that you give clear examples for each including the impact of your actions.

• As a PA you will need to communicate with a wide range of stakeholders both internally and externally, how have you demonstrated effective communication that achieved a positive outcome?
• In this role, you may support more than one Senior Leader. How have you adapted your working style to ensure you have delivered a quality service to stakeholders with varying demands?
• In this role, you will need to demonstrate good initiative, can you describe a time when you had competing priorities and tight deadlines? How did you organise your workload and ensure accuracy?

Please note that Success Profiles Behaviour examples are not required at this stage of the application process.

When a high volume of applications are received, the sift pass mark may be adjusted. Candidates will be invited to interview based on their merit order, with those achieving the highest scores being prioritised. Applicants who score below the adjusted pass mark but still pass will be placed on hold and may be invited to interview at a later date.

Stage 2 – Interview

If invited to interview, you will be assessed using techniques aligned with the Civil Service Success Profiles framework, covering all behaviours listed in the job advert.

Interviews will be carried out via Microsoft Teams.

Our main locations are Newport (South Wales) and Titchfield.

A reserve list may be held for a period up to 12 months from which further appointments may be made.

Important Dates:

The Sift will be conducted from 12/05/2026

Interviews will be conducted from w/c 01/06/2026

Dates are subject to change.

For the full terms and conditions of the post, please see attachment.

Please note that all campaigns may be subject to withdrawal at any stage if the internal resource position changes.

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 : Recruitment Operations
• Email : Recruitmentoperations@ons.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : Recruitmentoperations@ons.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 recruitment.complaints@ons.gov.uk. If you are not satisfied with the response you receive from the Department, you can contact the Civil Service Commission

Attachments

ONS_Vacancy_Terms(Permanent) Opens in new window (pdf, 83kB)