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Legal Editor

Posting date:	16 October 2024
Salary:	£29,500 per year
Hours:	Full time
Closing date:	30 October 2024
Location:	LS2 7UA
Company:	Government Recruitment Service
Job type:	Permanent
Job reference:	373257/1

Summary

DMA Leeds is a team of experts that provides specialised services to help manage DWP’s legal risks, ensuring that Social Security Benefits and Child Maintenance are administered in compliance with the legislation, whilst effectively reflecting their intended policies. It sits within Policy Group and manages all DWP appeals to Upper Tribunal and the higher courts, publishes legal guidance for decision makers in the Decision Makers Guide (DMG), Child Maintenance Decision Makers Guide (CMDMG) and Advice for Decision Making (ADM) and runs a complex case guidance service for decision makers.

The team works closely with policy colleagues, lawyers, operational delivery staff and the tribunal services to help achieve accuracy, fairness and consistency in decision making.

Supporting welfare delivery is another significant area of the unit’s work. In advance of drafting legal guidance, this involves scrutinising ministerial submissions, instructions to lawyers and draft regulations to ensure that they are accurate, correctly reflect case law and reflect policy intent.

It is also responsible for working closely with National Archive to maintain an accurate record of DWP social security legislation on legislation.gov.uk.

Working as part of a team of Legal Editors, this role involves undertaking legal editorial work to bring legislation on www.legislation.gov.uk fully up to date and to maintain this service on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions. You will work closely with the National Archives Legislation Services Team to support the effective management of legislative updates, identifying the impact of new legislation on existing legislation and ensuring those amendments are published on the existing database.

Key functions

• Closely analyse the text of new legislation, identifying impact(s) on existing legislation and extracting potentially complex information, such as that relating to commencement and geographical extent.
• Update legislation on the database using a bespoke X-MetaL authoring tool, applying amendments to the required editorial standard in a timely manner.
• Work as part of a team of Legal Editors, sharing knowledge and best practice to maintain consistency of approach.
• Update the unit’s public facing guidance on Gov.uk within agreed timescales and standards to ensure DWP’s guidance is accurate and reflects changes in legislation to the general public.
• Identify and implement improvements to layout, format and content of DWP’s public facing guidance.
• Undertake editorial checks, proof reading of internal products to ensure accuracy of content.