Are you looking to join a friendly, inclusive and hardworking team, working at the heart of Government's welfare spending and strategy? If so, we'd love to hear from you!

About the team

The Welfare Spending and Reform team (WSR) are the spending team for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), which makes up more than 20% of all government expenditure. We work on high-profile and sophisticated policy and spending priorities for working age benefits, including Child Benefit, disability benefits, Housing Benefit and Universal Credit. Our team has an excellent team spirit and are committed to diversity, inclusion and personal development.

About the role

Universal Credit (UC) is the main benefit supporting working age adults on low incomes and costs around £80 billion a year. Working on this in HM Treasury, we are at the heart of policy and spending decisions that affect the living standards of millions. We also have a meaningful role in managing government spending and improving economic growth by supporting people in work.

key accountabilities include:

1. Develop the expertise of yourself and your team so you can act as HM Treasury’s key point of contact on UC policies.
2. Lead HM Treasury’s work around the fraud and error in the benefits system which cost £9.7bn in 2023/24.
3. Jointly run senior stocktake meetings between HM Treasury and DWP to supervise delivery of programmes recovering these losses and encourage a shift towards prevention.
4. Advise HM Treasury Ministers on welfare spending options that can contribute to the government’s ambition to reduce levels of child poverty over this Parliament.
5. As part of the welfare spending team, coordinate spending control and approvals connected to Universal Credit.
6. Manage two staff to ensure they deliver timely and good quality work and that you support their personal development.
7. Acting as part of the team leadership, alongside the team’s other Range Es (Grade 7s) and Range E2s (Grade 6s).  

About you

Our successful candidate will have strong, evidence-based decision-making skills, effective collaboration skills, including knowing when to challenge and when to compromise, and lastly, the ability to lead the delivery of timely and high-quality outcomes from both your line management chain, and wider team.

About us

HM Treasury is proud of a diverse and inclusive work environment, committed to fairness and the promotion of equality of opportunity for all. We know that having a range of experiences, ways of working and thinking makes us a stronger organisation, better at developing policy that is reflective of the communities we serve. We embrace different views and experiences and value the fresh perspective that people from a variety of circumstances bring to the work we do. We welcome applications from candidates who have not previously worked for the Civil Service, mid- and late-career changers with transferrable skills, people from all backgrounds and circumstances.

Some of the Benefits our people love! 

• 25 days annual leave (rising to 30 days after 5 years), plus 8 public holidays and the King’s birthday (unless you have a legacy arrangement as an existing Civil Servant). Additionally, we operate flexitime systems, allowing you to take up to an additional 2 days off each month.
• Flexible working patterns (part-time, job-share, compressed hours). 
• Generous parental leave and adoption leave packages. 
• A Civil Service Pension which provides an attractive pension, benefits for dependants and average employer contributions of 27%
• Access to a cycle-to-work salary sacrifice scheme and season ticket advances.
• A Rental Deposit Advance Scheme to help meet the total costs of deposits for privately rented homes.
• Access to HM Treasury’s benefits portal allowing you access to a range of discount codes for online shopping.
• A range of active staff networks, based around interests (e.g. analysts, music society, sports and social club) and diversity
• Access to a range of allowances if eligibility applies. These include profession related allowances.  

For more information about the role and how to apply, please follow the apply link. 

If you need any reasonable adjustments to take part in the selection process, please tell us about this in your online application form, or speak to the recruitment team at .uk