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Private Secretary to Grants Delivery Director

Job details
Posting date: 02 May 2025
Salary: £41,156 to £48,817 per year
Additional salary information: National salary £41,156 - £45,112 London salary £44,942 - £48,817
Hours: Full time
Closing date: 13 May 2025
Location: Edinburgh
Company: Government Recruitment Service
Job type: Permanent
Job reference: 403581/5

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Summary

The Department for Business and Trade (DBT) is the department for economic growth. We support businesses to invest, grow and export, creating jobs and opportunities across the country.

We:

  • Advise, support, and promote British businesses to grow and export.
  • Shape our rules to ensure businesses thrive, markets are competitive, and consumers are protected.
  • Open up new markets for businesses by removing barriers and striking trade deals.
  • Secure global investment from businesses and investors.
  • Champion free trade, economic security, and resilient supply chains.

This role presents an opportunity to work at the heart of the Grants Delivery Directorate (GDD) in DBT. The department operates a broad portfolio of grants with a lifetime budget of over £30bn. These schemes support many of the department's priority industries and sectors. GDD has been established as a centre of excellence for grant and funding delivery within the department. GDD works closely with colleagues from policy, finance, analysis and legal, as well as industry experts, to award and monitor grants across a wide range of policy areas, ensuring compliance with government grant standards and HMT’s Managing Public Money

We are looking for a well organised and enthusiastic Private Secretary to support the Director for Grants Delivery. This post holder will be responsible for supporting the Director to manage their time, emails and commissions. This will involve strong relationships and partnering with other senior managers within GDD other private offices (including the Chief Finance Officer and Chief Operating Officer) as well as other parts of the department.

The Role

The successful candidate will work closely with senior civil servants within GDD, wider department, and also with other key offices in the Department to manage and coordinate commissions, important meetings and events. You will provide a high-quality service for the Director, organising their time, emails and travel. You will also support some of the directorate business management functions.

The successful individual will:

  • Lead the day to day running of the Directors Private Office, ensuring that the office delivers a high quality, effective and efficient service. This will involve building a close working relationship with the Director, anticipating their needs, drawing urgent items to their attention, and preparing high quality briefings.
  • Manage complex and sensitive commissions, ensuring officials understand what is expected of them; monitoring progress on actions to ensure that they are on track; and review notes and submissions for both quality and accuracy.
  • Line management of an HEO, working through them to ensure the effective management of the Director’s inbox, diary, daypack, box, travel arrangements and any other corporate items.
  • Proactively engage with officials across the Directorate including the senior leadership team, wider Department and across-Whitehall to ensure the Director is briefed on relevant issues and prepared for upcoming meetings.
  • Help to manage the effective running of the directorate – in particular through the development of a directorate business plan.
  • Build high quality relationships with key private offices and represent the Director and Directorate as needed and provide a secretariat function for directorate SLT.

Proud member of the Disability Confident employer scheme

Disability Confident
A Disability Confident employer will generally offer an interview to any applicant that declares they have a disability and meets the minimum criteria for the job as defined by the employer. It is important to note that in certain recruitment situations such as high-volume, seasonal and high-peak times, the employer may wish to limit the overall numbers of interviews offered to both disabled people and non-disabled people. For more details please go to Disability Confident.

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