Grants Policy and Innovation Lead
| Posting date: | 10 March 2026 |
|---|---|
| Salary: | £57,204 to £63,953 per year |
| Hours: | Full time |
| Closing date: | 22 March 2026 |
| Location: | Glasgow |
| Company: | Government Recruitment Service |
| Job type: | Permanent |
| Job reference: | 451817/1 |
Summary
The Core Team works across government to support the efficiency and effectiveness of grant funding, in order to maximise grant outcomes and minimise risk, delivering the greatest benefit to the economy and citizens.
The Grants Function is a multi-disciplinary team supporting a broad and diverse stakeholder group, we assist with building capability and improving compliance with standards through:
- maintaining and communicating the Functional Standard for grant making across government departments and their Arm’s Length Bodies;
- developing new and innovative policy, to enhance government grant making;
- monitoring the maturity of grant making departments’ processes, highlighting opportunities and risks;
- providing expert advice through our network of business partners;
- convening the Complex Grants Advice Panel (CGAP), an independent, cross-government panel of experts, coordinated and chaired by the Cabinet Office – the panel is mandated for grant schemes that will deliver manifesto commitments – the panel provides critical challenge to high value, high-risk, priority grant schemes; and
- supporting the development of knowledge and capability in government grant making.
The post-holder will work within a small policy team, focused on the development of new and new and innovative policy for grant making.
We are seeking an experienced, senior policy practitioner who has a deep understanding of government grants and/ or commercial policy, including scheme or programme design, development and administration, as well as experience in engaging with diverse stakeholder groups, to agree strategy and deliver change.
The post holder will work within our new Policy Lab, alongside the Head of Grants Policy. The team will focus on a range of new and challenging policy areas, aimed at driving innovation, increasing flexibility and developing new options for bespoke delivery through grant schemes. The focus will be on improving impact, outcomes and value for money from more than £119bn of annual government grant expenditure.
The Grants Policy team’s responsibilities include:
- ongoing maintenance and development of the grants Functional Standard, which underpins the work of the Grants Function across government - the Standard covers leadership, governance, policy and process - continuous improvement of the Standard also includes developing criteria to enable the assessment of grant making maturity across government from both the structural and process perspectives;
- developing new and innovative policy for government grant making covering areas such as the development and testing of bespoke delivery models, value for money, counter fraud and process simplification;
- oversight and development of the Grants Pipeline Control Framework, which is aimed at identifying the highest risk, most contentious grant schemes in development across government with the aim of providing expert advice to support development and mitigate risk;
- acting as a subject matter expert (SME), supporting access to expert advice, working with our Expert Support team and Complex Grants Advice Panel, in addition to providing bespoke advice via regular discussions with scheme owners across government;
- supporting the grants capability offer, by providing SME support to the Capability team, on the development of new products and services; and
- working with the Assurance team to support the development and delivery of the Grants Continuous Improvement Assessment Framework and associated action planning.
Proud member of the Disability Confident employer scheme