Grade 7 Customer Accessibility, Standards and Assurance Roles

Posting date:	15 July 2025
Salary:	£55,557 to £71,675 per year
Additional salary information:	£55,557 - £66,058 - National £59,677 - £70,344 - Outer London £61,089 - £71,675 - Inner London
Hours:	Full time
Closing date:	27 July 2025
Location:	Newcastle-upon-Tyne
Company:	Government Recruitment Service
Job type:	Permanent
Job reference:	415011/14

Summary

DWP is committed to continuously improving the accessibility of its services for customers. The Customer Accessibility, Standards and Assurance Team sits proudly in the Accessibility, Disability and Disputes Directorate and has been created to establish assurance frameworks and governance structures that will identify and resolve issues related to accessibility and equality.

The scale of the ambition is high, given the importance of getting this right for our customers. This team will become the centre of expertise for accessibility and will need to build credibility and confidence with stakeholders across the department and externally.

This will not be without challenge; using your network and expertise, you’ll need to bring together talented individuals to establish your team. Leading with creativity and confidence, you will need to influence senior leaders, have good political sensitivity and be comfortable working in an ambiguous, fast-paced and changing environment. However, the rewards are clear; you will have the opportunity to influence meaningful cultural changes across the department, to embed accessibility and inclusion at the core of our services.

We are looking to fill 2 different roles:

Role 1. Act & Improve Lead

Successful candidates can expect to be involved in a range of the following:

• Establishing CASA as the central point of expertise on accessibility, offering guidance and signposting to useful resources to support project leads when considering the needs of disabled people across the relevant transformational workstreams.
• Ensuring representation in the relevant governance boards or steering groups for transformational projects, to advocate and ensure customer accessibility is considered for new and changing policy, design and delivery of our services.
• Establishing the methodology and processes required for the department to self-audit its existing services, to identifying areas for improvement and appropriate remedial action where necessary, considering the appropriate prioritisation and governance discussions and routes.
• Establishing a routine reporting mechanism, assuring the Accounting Officer and Senior Responsible Owners of compliance with the Equality Act, or where risk exists. 
• Using the outcomes and information from the assurance framework to refine CASA’s strategic work plans for both communications and engagement and departmental learning and development.
• Developing and refining the department’s approach to the accessibility in the Future Quality Model (currently Quality Assurance Framework).
• Working with the Quality Assurance Team to develop a series of checks that align with the customer accessibility standards, to ensure the department’s services are delivered in the right way to citizens who require extra support.
• Supporting the Quality Assurance Team to identify trends and root causes where poor performance exists, including addressing those trends within the main business areas.
• Using the outcomes and information from the Future Quality Model to inform CASA’s strategic workplan for areas to audit communications and engagement and departmental learning and development.
• Identifying a centralised team(s) that would control the handling of non-standard contacts and then engage with appropriate stakeholders based on the matter. 
• Gathering and utilising complaint reasons and root causes of non-standard issues to drive change and improvement across policy, process and people. 
• Driving change in the appropriate areas / teams for improvement. 
• Taking the learnings and observations from other teams, inside or outside of CASA and using that information to drive forward continuous improvements changes.  E.g. learnings from Review and Assure into actionable changes by Act and Improve. 
• Ability to travel for working events or team meetings, where location base of teams could be spread across the UK to ensure effective collaboration and team cohesion. 

Role 2. Review and Assure Lead 

Successful candidates can expect to be involved in a range of the following:

• Designing and developing a framework which allows the department to assure itself that its services comply with relevant parts of the Equality Act 2010 when making its services accessible for customers who require extra support.   
• Embedding the Customer Accessibility Standards across the department in current service lines, policy and systems development and across all change programmes in DWP. Includes reviewing and refining the standards over time to ensure their relevance and suitability in supporting the department to meet its obligations under the Equality Act 2010 when meeting accessibility requirements.   
• Designing and delivering the assurance framework to assure each service line meets its obligations under the Equality Act 2010 when meeting accessibility requirements, including supporting service lines to identify improvements, adequately prioritising improvements and providing support in overall departmental prioritisation discussions. Where improvements cannot be deployed, articulate the reasons why ensuring the risks are sufficiently understood.   
• Working across change programmes (major and minor) policy colleagues, and governance teams to ensure services and policies are designed to comply with the customer accessibility standards, thereby meeting our obligations under the Equality Act 2010 when considering accessibility requirements.   
• Using outcomes from the Assurance Framework Work to support and inform colleagues in CASA, People and Capability, Digital Group and Operations to develop tools and training to support front line colleagues in the delivery of services to customers, ensuring they are able to meet their own accountabilities in making DWP’s services accessible.   
• Ensuring representation in the relevant governance boards or steering groups for transformational projects, to advocate and ensure customer accessibility is considered for new and changing policy, design and delivery of our services.  
• Working closely with the CASA Insight Lead, use relevant data and insight sources to inform the team strategies for deploying the Assurance Framework to assess compliance across existing service lines.   
• Using outcomes from the Assurance Framework to support the development of operational instructions and guidance, ensuring accessibility processes and requirements are at the heart of the way colleagues engage with those who require extra support to navigate our services. 
• Strong understanding and working knowledge of prevailing governance, risk and assurance standards and public-sector rules.  
• Ability to travel for working events or team meetings, where location base of teams could be spread across the UK to ensure effective collaboration and team cohesion. 

Proud member of the Disability Confident employer scheme

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.