Policy Advisor

Posting date:	11 July 2025
Salary:	£37,497 to £43,646 per year
Additional salary information:	National: Min £37,497 Max £38,373 London: Min £42,958 Max £43,646
Hours:	Full time
Closing date:	25 July 2025
Location:	SW1H 9NA
Company:	Government Recruitment Service
Job type:	Permanent
Job reference:	413997/3

Summary

Shaping policy that touches lives across the UK. That's our purpose.

We’re hiring Policy Advisors into Department for Work and Pensions, the UK’s largest government department. 

You’ll join our brilliant Policy Group team. We help bring about social change by translating Ministers' ambitions and decisions on the labour market, delivering and protecting the welfare system, child poverty and pensions into practical policies and services. 

It’s work with real-world impact. Our policy supports solutions and services that everyone in the UK will interact with, often at important and vulnerable times in their lives. 

We are looking for people with a range of backgrounds, all sorts of real-life experience and have a real passion and ability to make a difference. 

You don’t need a policy background, but you need the skills to become an expert Policy Advisor. We are looking for people that can demonstrate they have keen attention to detail, have strong verbal and written communication skills, analytical skills, and the ability to make strategic decisions.

As a Policy Advisor, you will need to be flexible and confident in analysing different types of information, communicating in different ways to suit the audience, and understanding people’s varied perspectives. Being an HEO in Policy Group means working with and delivering through others, building strong and effective relationships across your team and the wider department, with other government departments and across a wider stakeholder community.

You’ll work in a particular policy area. You’ll support the drafting of policy, and provide advice and guidance on policy to colleagues, Ministers, private offices, and sometimes number 10 Downing St.

You’ll quickly build relationships with key stakeholders and grow your knowledge of strategy for your area, and awareness of any legislative changes that will impact your work. 

You’ll make sure the strategy for your policy area works in the real world, and that policy is achieving what it’s intended to. The work we do supports citizens, Ministers, government, and parliament. 

You’ll work alongside a highly collaborative and established community of policy experts. Together we develop deliverable policy and legislation by collaborating with a broad spectrum of stakeholders to draft change and manage associated risk, ensuring the best outcomes for UK citizens. 

Our work is about identifying and solving challenges to make a real world difference. We help front line teams in DWP, across government and external bodies to enact policy and support our diverse customers.

Regardless of where you work in Policy Group you can expect to be involved in: 

• Working in a specific policy area, with some agency over how you plan and organise your area of work.
• Working across organisational boundaries, and with key partners, to deliver outcomes.
• Problem solving to achieve outcomes for citizens.
• Supporting a Team Leader by contributing to policy development as well as the management of the wider division and strategic management of Policy Group
• Advising on decisions affecting direction and delivery, assessing risk, and advising on mitigation, including assessing the consequences of any proposed changes.

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy.

We particularly welcome people from ethnic minority backgrounds applying as they are under-represented groups in DWP; and applications from people able to work from our Leeds and Sheffield hubs.

To understand more about DWP and Policy Group – and full information on applying for this vacancy - you must read the attached Candidate Pack.

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About 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.