Service Operations Lead

Job summary

We are MHCLG

The Private Rented Sector (PRS) team is on a mission to raise the bar in England’s private rented market by improving standards, boosting transparency and ensuring an even handed approach to enforcement. At the heart of this is the register your rental property service: a national digital service introduced through the Renters’ Rights Act. designed to collect landlord, property and compliance information. It makes it easier for landlords to meet their legal duties, helps local authorities target enforcement where it matters most, and gives tenants the confidence to make informed choices about where they live.

The Service Operations Lead plays a pivotal role in shaping and championing the end-to-end customer experience for the service. Acting as a visible role model for excellent customer service, they set clear expectations for how users are supported, ensuring interactions are consistent, empathetic and resolution focused. By working closely with the service desk, internal colleagues and suppliers, they promote a strong customer centric culture, embedding good practice into processes, guidance and escalation handling. The role uses insight from user feedback, complaints and contact trends to continuously improve the experience, ensuring learning is shared and standards are raised across the wider service.

This includes managing escalations across a wide range of areas, from policy queries, complaints and advice to enforcement queries, legal interpretation, information governance enquiries (including SARs and FOIs), finance and payment issues amongst others. They ensure decisions are evidence based, proportionate and auditable, reflecting system operator accountability, legislative requirements and data protection obligations.

Find out more about our Digital teams and what they are working on through our MHCLG Digital blog. Please note that MHCLG do not offer visa sponsorship and applicants will need a valid visa for the duration of your employment.

Job description

As a Service Operations Lead, you'll:

• Manage the delivery of first and second line support for the service, ensuring incidents, service requests, and complaints are logged, triaged and resolved effectively
• Act as a subject matter lead for the service desk, identifying emerging issues, improving knowledge management, scripts and standard responses, and ensuring accurate guidance is provided to users
• Ensure the service desk provides consistent, high quality customer service across all contact channels, aligned to agreed service standards and user needs
• Ensure escalations are clear, evidence based and appropriately prioritised, reducing rework and enabling internal teams to act quickly and confidently. Identify and escalate risks to senior stakeholders when appropriate
• Work with suppliers to monitor performance, ensuring correct categorisation, escalation discipline and adherence to agreed processes and standards
• Coordinate service transition activities, ensuring the service desk is prepared to support new or changed functionality, including training, knowledge transfer and early life support
• Continuously improve service delivery by analysing data from recurring incidents and escalation trends, refining operational procedures and enhancing user experience
• Work closely with product, policy and delivery teams to ensure the impacts of change to the service desk are understood and managed
• Ensure service desk operations align with service management and ITIL aligned practices, including problem management, knowledge management and auditability

Person specification

As a Service Operations Lead, you'll have :

• Proven experience leading the investigation, prioritisation and resolution of calls/tickets, including diagnosing issues and coordinating input from specialist or resolver teams
• Experience owning operational issues end to end, ensuring incidents or problems are mitigated, resolved or handed over appropriately
• Experience contributing to continual service improvement, identifying process inefficiencies and supporting improvements based on operational insight
• Evidence of communicating to and managing stakeholders from diverse backgrounds, levels of seniority and with variable knowledge of IT
• Working knowledge of a service management framework (for example ITIL), supported by a qualification (such as ITIL v3 or above) or equivalent practical experience
• Sufficient technical understanding to work confidently with engineers and suppliers, understand core technical concepts, and apply solutions with appropriate support
• Experience using service management or monitoring tools to investigate incidents, analyse performance data and produce operational reporting

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £44,004, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government contributes £12,747 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.At MHCLG we offer many benefits that range from tailored career pathways and flexible working to MyLifestyle Childcare Voucher and Cycle to Work Schemes. For more information, please click here.

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

The application process will be split into 2 stages, testing the following Success Profiles:

Behaviours , Technical

Please ensure your CV does not contain any personally identifiable information.

Note: We do not consider direct CV applications. All applications must be submitted via the provided application link.

Important: Your CV and Cover Letter must be merged into a single document before uploading.

Stage 1: Sift (CV & Cover Letter)

Technical: Your CV and covering letter should explain why you are interested in the role (25%) and how your experience meets the essential criteria (75%). (Your CV and cover letter combined should be no more than two pages.)

Most of our campaigns utilise multiple assessors and so it is possible that each of your answers would be viewed by different assessors.

In the event that we receive a large number of applications, we may conduct an initial sift using the lead sift question listed in the advert. Candidates who pass the initial sift may be progressed to a full sift, or progressed straight to interview.

Lead sift question (Technical): Tell us about a time when you used a recognised service management framework or best practice approach (for example ITIL practices such as incident, problem or change management) to manage or improve a live service. Please describe the practices you applied, why you chose them, and the outcome they achieved.

Stage 2: Interview

• Behaviours: "Managing a Quality Service"
• Technical: Technical questions will be based around the essential skills and criteria as listed in the job description, as well as the following profiles: "Ownership and initiative", "Service management framework knowledge", "Problem management".*

*Candidates will be asked to prepare a 5-10 minute presentation, further details will be provided on invitation to interview.

Sift and Interview Dates

Sifting is envisaged to take place the week commencing 4th May 2026.

Interviews are envisaged to take place the week commencing 25th May 2026 and are currently being held remotely via videocall. This could be subject to change.

How We Recruit

Find out everything you need to know before applying here..

• Applying
• Sifting
• Interview
• Interview Results & Feedback
• Reserve List
• Near Miss
• Civil Service Grades
• We are a DCS, RIS & GPTWV employer
• Reasonable Adjustments

How to Apply

What you need to know before applying.

• Security Clearance Requirements
• Civil Service Nationality Requirements
• Right to Work
• Artificial Intelligence
• Civil Service Code and Recruitment Principles
• CV Declaration
• Sponsorships
• Salary and Grade
• Existing Civil Servants
• Conflict of Interest
• Location and Flexible Working
• Fixed Term Contracts
• Internal Fraud Database - Internal Fraud Register
• Appeals and Complaints
• Conflict of Interest

Security Clearance Requirements

National Office: + SC

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

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 : Digital Data Jobs
• Email : Digitaldatajobs@communities.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : Digitaldatajobs@communities.gov.uk

Further information

If you are unsure about any part of the process or require additional information about the post to enable you to progress your application, you should speak to the Resourcing team - Recruitment@communities.gov.uk. Candidates can appeal at any stage of the recruitment process if they believe there has been:
•a procedural irregularity
•an infringement of the Civil Service equal opportunities policy
•exceptional circumstances which were not notified to the interview panel which might have affected performance on the day.
It is important to note that these are appeals about the process not the decision. In the first instance, an appeal should be directed to the MHCLG Resourcing Hub at Recruitment@communities.gov.uk.
If the MHCLG Resourcing Hub is unable to satisfactorily resolve your complaint, you may contact put your complaint in writing to the Civil Service Commission, Room G8,1 Horse Guards Road, London, SW1A 2HQ or by email to: info@csc.gov.uk