Senior Lawyer
| Posting date: | 06 May 2025 |
|---|---|
| Salary: | £67,170 to £78,192 per year |
| Additional salary information: | National: £67,170 - £76,117; London: £70,845 - £78,192 |
| Hours: | Full time |
| Closing date: | 26 May 2025 |
| Location: | B4 6BS |
| Company: | Government Recruitment Service |
| Job type: | Permanent |
| Job reference: | 403919/1 |
Summary
Do you care about the safety of products and want to protect people and places? Can we use your skills, knowledge and experience to enable UK business to thrive? If the answer is yes, then we would like to hear from you!
We are the Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS), part of the Department for Business & Trade. We are here for the purpose of making regulation work to deliver real world impact. Regulation is a powerful Government tool to address market failures, influence behaviour and promote positive action. Crafted and delivered well, regulation can be an enabler of growth, innovation and efficiency.
Since early 2018 we have been building a positive and creative team that enjoys a position of influence and respect within an organisation that continues to grow.
Our primary purpose is to protect people and places from product-related harm, ensuring consumers and businesses can buy and sell products with confidence
Further information can be found on our website here.
We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles. We embrace diversity and promote equality of opportunity. We are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives and skills. There is a guaranteed interview scheme (DCS) for people with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.
We are Inclusive
We are fully committed to being an inclusive employer and ensuring equal opportunities. We are keen to make our workforce as diverse as possible and recognise how important inclusivity is to achieve the best outcomes. We hope to attract applications from all underrepresented groups.
We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation if required to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform crucial job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request accommodation.
The OPSS Legal team is a highly regarded team from a mixture of public sector and private practice backgrounds. The team provides legal advice across all of OPSS’s functions. This is an exciting opportunity for a highly motivated lawyer with strong interpersonal skills who is able to work well within a team. This post reports directly to the Chief Legal Officer.
You will work closely with teams across the OPSS to provide pragmatic, solution focussed and high-quality legal advice. The scope of the role, reflecting the breadth of OPSS’s functions, is broad. We do not expect applicants to have existing expertise in all areas of OPSS’s work but you must be willing to advise on a wide range of matters across OPSS’ regulatory functions. In doing so, you will liaise with both DBT and other government departments’ legal advisors (GLD) as well as other regulators and commercial entities as appropriate.
Key Responsibilities:
You will have responsibility for a stimulating, wide-ranging portfolio of work which includes:
- Providing timely and high-quality legal advice to colleagues on a wide range of issues, both in respect of discrete requests for legal assistance and on larger matters;
- Building and maintaining relationships with enforcement colleagues to ensure effective legal input;
- Providing strategic legal advice when OPSS is considering, or has committed to, taking on new regulatory functions on behalf of other Government departments;
- Understanding policy perspectives and confidently presenting delivery solutions;
- Liaising with a range of partners, building relationships and furthering the achievement of OPSS’s strategic objectives in so doing;
- Advising on data protection and FOI issues;
- Making a contribution to the learning and development of the Legal team, as well as to the OPSS more broadly;
- Supervising more junior members of the team to ensure successful delivery of the team’s outputs.
Proud member of the Disability Confident employer scheme