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Job summary

The Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) was established under the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 on 1 December 2012, operating from two sites, Liverpool, and Darlington.

We provide disclosure functions in England, Wales, Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man, and barring functions for England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, on behalf of government.

DBS operates within the safeguarding arena alongside our multi-agency partners. Safeguarding means protecting people’s health, wellbeing, and human rights, and enabling them to live free from harm, abuse, and neglect.

We provide services that enable organisations in the public, private and voluntary sectors to make better informed, safer recruitment decisions. We do this by providing information to enable them to determine whether individuals are unsuitable or unable to undertake certain work, particularly with occupations involving regular contact with vulnerable groups, including children.

DBS is an executive non-departmental public body, sponsored by the Home Office.

For further information, please see below for a collection of DBS strategies and business plans:

• DBS strategies - GOV.UK
• DBS business plans - GOV.UK

Job description

The Transformation and Service Improvement Team leads the development of business improvement activities and supports change initiatives within the Operational Services Directorate. The team provide a single point of contact within the Operational Services Directorate to oversee and drive business improvement and change. The team work closely with colleagues across the DBS including the corporate change function, and external suppliers to ensure improvement and change is embedded.

The Business Improvement Manager will:

Support Strategic Business Development activities within Operational Services Directorate including:

• Business Improvement

• Process Improvement
• Strategic Planning
• Business case development
• Options Appraisals
• Service design.

• Supporting the development of Operational Services Business and Service plans.
• Compliance with DBS and Home Office Governance and Assurance requirements

Support the development of business improvement, change and planning documentation:

• Support the completion of Home Office requirements, documentation.
• Contribute to the Directorate achieving Value for Money
• Draft Reports and Data and Equality Impact assessments
• Support the development of business case documents, polices products, artefacts.
• Provide project support.

Provide a single point of contact for business improvement and change activity within Operational Services:

• Provide a single point of contact for change and business improvement,

• Support local change initiatives and oversee the process to enter these into the DBS change front door.
• Manage and monitor the recording of work request process.
• Support requests received from the Continuous Improvement Forum
• Support requests received from corporate business improvement and change forums.
• Maintain a change log for the directorate.
• Work within the governance arrangements for DBS and Home Office.

Work in partnership with the Corporate Change Management and Business Improvement Teams and the Operational Services Teams to support and embed improvement and change activity including:

• Support Business Transition and Operational Change
• Support Business Change readiness – people, systems, and information.
• Develop Change champions / Change agents / SME.
• Change management.
• Change lifecycle.
• Maximising the application of future tools
• System administrators and oversight, role-based security administration
• Benefits management and realisation
• Stakeholder management
• Contribute to Staff engagement, training, and mentoring.

Conduct and support a range of Business Analysis Activities within the Directorate:

• Root cause analysis, discovery, investigatory, analysis, Deep dives, research, benchmarking, problem management, incident management, and risk management.

The Business Improvement Manager will:

• Support the DBS Strategies, Policies and Procedures.
• Work collaboratively with Senior Business Improvement Manager, Head of Transformation and Service Improvement, and members of the Transformation and Service Improvement Team to plan and deliver Department objectives.
• Support the development of line management and matrix working across the Transformation and Service Improvement
• Carry out recruitment, learning & development activities with the team to ensure the team is adequately resourced trained and supervised.
• Build effective working relationships with key internal and external stakeholders.
• Representing DBS / Transformation and Service Improvement Team at a range of internal and external appropriate forums.
• Work as part of a wider directorate, bringing together skills and expertise into a single, coherent, and enabling directorate.
• Manage performance of the Transformation and Service Improvement Team and address any individual performance issues.
• Maintain positive working relationships with key stakeholders.
• Ensure that team members can deliver their best: encouraging personal and professional development, maintaining oversight for health, safety and wellbeing and support through change.
• A commitment to self-development and that of your team to reach full potential.
• Proactively working with your team to identify any continuous improvement initiatives.
• Communicating effectively with your team and Directorate to ensure that policies and procedures are understood and implemented.

Person specification

Essential criteria:

Ability:

• Ability to work to challenging timescales.
• Ability to managing issues to resolution.
• Able to deliver clear and effective communications (written and verbal).
• Ability to work both in a team, or independently to deliver tasks and project outputs.

Experience:

• Experience of effective collaboration with internal and external stakeholders.
• Good standard of written and verbal communication.
• Awareness of Adult and Children Safeguarding.

Technical:

• Good Skills in Microsoft 365 Packages such as Outlook, Excel, Word, and PowerPoint, Teams.

Desirable criteria:

Experience:

• Experience of working in a business improvement project or change management environment.

Technical:

• Formal Professional Qualification or Degree or equivalent.

Behaviours

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

• Working Together
• Changing and Improving
• Delivering at Pace
• Making Effective Decisions

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £36,444, Disclosure & Barring Service contributes £10,557 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).

The DBS offers a number of excellent benefits for its employees. These can include:

• Generous annual leave entitlement
• Excellent maternity, paternity and adoption schemes (after a qualifying period)
• Commitment to the health and wellbeing of our employees
• Employee Assistance Programme
• Flexible working opportunities
• Eyecare voucher scheme
• Occupational Health Service including referrals for counselling and physiotherapy
• 24/7 Counselling and Wellbeing Service
• A Civil Service Pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%

The DBS vision and purpose is to make people safer by being a visible, trusted and influential organisation, providing an outstanding quality of service to all our customers and partners, where our people understand the important safeguarding contributions they make and feel proud to work here. To do this, the DBS is committed to being an employer that is able to attract, develop, retain and engage diverse talent that is representative of the communities we serve, and to be an organisation providing outstanding service to all our existing and new customers, who are diverse and have a range of different needs. We want all our staff to be able to bring their ‘whole self’ to work.

Further Information:

To view the DBS Recruitment and On-boarding Privacy Notice, please click the link below:

DBS Recruitment and On-boarding Privacy Notice - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

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.

As part of the recruitment process the Disclosure & Barring Service will conduct a behaviours based sift exercise and interview process.

To apply for this post, please provide a suitability statement of no more than 1000 words, outlining how your skills, experience and qualifications meet the requirements of the role, including all essential and desirable criteria, and the key responsibilities.

You will also need to provide behaviour examples for the below:

• Working Together
• Changing and improving
• Delivering at Pace
• Making Effective Decisions

If there is a high volume of applicants, the panel will sift based on the suitability statement and lead behaviour ‘Delivering at Pace’. Candidates who pass the initial sift may be progressed to a full sift, or progressed straight to interview.

All candidates who are successful at the sifting stage will be invited to attend a virtual panel based interview via MS Teams.

The aim of the panel interview will be to assess your ability to demonstrate the following behaviours:

• Working Together
• Changing and Improving
• Delivering at Pace
• Making Effective Decisions

The following timetable outlines indicative dates. Please note, these dates may be subject to change without prior notice.

Advert Closing date: Monday, 10 August 2026 at 10am.

The initial candidate sift is due to take place week commencing 10 August 2026.

Interviews are due to take place week commencing 24 August 2026.

Whilst we will endeavour to provide some flexibility with regards to dates wherever possible, it is unlikely that we will be able to offer an alternative date once an appointment has been scheduled.

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.

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 : DBS People Support Team
• Email : dbspeoplesupportteam@dbs.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : DBSPeopleSupportTeam@dbs.gov.uk

Attachments

HEO Business Improvement Manager - DBS Job Description Opens in new window (pdf, 361kB)