Deputy Director, Small Business Strategy and High Streets
| Posting date: | 25 September 2025 |
|---|---|
| Salary: | £81,000 to £117,800 per year |
| Hours: | Full time |
| Closing date: | 12 October 2025 |
| Location: | Edinburgh |
| Company: | Government Recruitment Service |
| Job type: | Permanent |
| Job reference: | 429960/5 |
Summary
We have a clear mission - to grow the economy. Our role is to help businesses invest, grow and export to create jobs and opportunities right across the country. Click below to find out why you should join DBT's Senior Civil Service team:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/W0yhNjUTsws?si=xIIMzsLehkRpRURh
The hiring manager for this position; Rosalind Wall, will be hosting a virtual call for any interested applicants to discuss the role and answer any questions. Please note this is not part of the formal assessment process.
This will be held via Microsoft Teams on Tuesday 7th October at 11am (UK time).
Please click here for the meeting link.
If you would like to join without your full name being displayed in the meeting, please ensure you access the link on a personal device and select 'Join without signing in'.
This is a hugely exciting time to be leading the strategy on Small Business. For the first time in over 13 years, the Prime Minister led the launch of a new Small Business Plan with over 160 activities to support small businesses clearly demonstrating that small business growth is a priority. Over 1000 businesses were involved in developing that plan which focused on tackling the issues they raised that get in their way – which is why tackling late payments was such a prominent measure. Businesses feeling that Government is backing them to thrive is central to this Government’s approach. But with 5.5million small businesses employing 9x% of employees, it is a large and hugely diverse audience to reach with complex interests and needs.
Your role will be to take forward delivery of the Small Business plan – not just to make sure the measures are completed, but to help it continue to evolve and develop in response to an ever-changing landscape. You will help develop the narrative with ministers to ensure the plan has maximum impact and in particular to help give small businesses and scale ups the confidence to take investment decisions and to grow. They will want to ensure that the small business plan has been communicated and has landed well with key stakeholders. This will require an ongoing programme of engagement and communication driven through first class stakeholder management.
In addition, Ministers will want to ensure that DBT is seen as the voice of the small and scaling businesses. The strategy team will need to ensure that it spots key blockers and enablers and influences across Whitehall and wider delivery partners to ensure this voice is heard. You and your team’s role will be to listen to new ideas and emerging issues from that community and to keep the plan current and attuned to those needs to make it clear that Government is listening and taking action to remove barriers to growth. You will need to be flexible and adaptable to changing priorities and the role could evolve to cover new areas as they emerge. This will enable the wider Small Business Growth Directorate to continue to focus on delivery of the wider plan measures.
This role also includes leading on supporting the everyday economy including how to revive and support thriving high streets. This is not just to support traders on high streets but recognising that their success if a visible measure of the state of the UK economy. Linked to the devolution agenda in England and the growing role of mayors, our ministers are particularly interested in high streets and how people interact with their local economy. Your role will be to support our ministers and work closely with MHCLG high street policy.
- Leading on the implementation of the Small Business Plan – one of the departments big four priorities. Developing clear policies to support business to start and grow a business.
- Small Business planning and advocacy. Identifying key issues that impact on small businesses ability to start up and grow and develop policy to address this, or influence others on cross cutting policy areas such as tax, skills, and sustainability.
- Horizon scanning, working with think tanks, business representatives, and private sector providers to draw on international evidence to develop new policy initiatives or reshape existing ones to drive growth.
- Identifying key policy areas that could support small business growth and work across boundaries to ensure policy development supports growth and addresses emerging Ministerial priorities.
- Responsibility for building and maintaining senior relationships with mayoral areas to negotiate an agreed position.
- Establishing a new policy function to bring together DBT-owned levers across the department to revive the everyday economy and our high streets
- Designing and delivering specific policies to support our high streets, including a reformed high street accelerator model; and grant schemes which support new businesses establish on the high street. Potentially a total programme scale of £30m from 26-29.
- Contributing towards building an inclusive, supportive, and dynamic team culture whilst helping to build the capabilities required to deliver the policy vision of this government.
- Be responsible for setting their own team strategy and delivery plan, with appropriate performance milestones and metrics, and monitoring and evaluation plan.
- Have full accountability for all baseline SCS mandatory requirements, such as mandatory training, office attendance, correspondence/PQ/FOI, diversity, and equality.
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