Head of Business Services

The Business Services Team is made up of around 26 people who collectively have responsibility for providing business support to the rest of the Directorate of Legal Services delivering a range of services including finance, staffing, professional standards, business continuity, performance, administration and business support. It is the operational backbone of this large, and growing, in-house legal team. The post-holder will have a broad remit demanding diverse skills mix ranging from finance, facilities and people management. The team of around 26 people benefit from having deep subject matter expertise across all areas, with responsibility for delivering:

• Finance: Payment transactions, budgeting and forecasting
• HR: Staffing, professional standards, management of the staff survey action plan and recruitment activity
• Business development: corporate business and risk management reporting
• IT: management for a DLS bespoke IT system
• Change: implementing MPS and DLS driven change programmes
• Corporate: Performance, Allocations, FOIs, Health, Safety and Wellbeing, Accommodation, administrative support services.
This is a leadership and management role with responsibility for ensuring that the team has the right capacity, capability and culture to succeed. The role has responsibility for:
• Developing line management capability to ensure that work is delivered at the most appropriate level within the team(s).
• Performance and improving data reporting (qualitative, quantitative and insight) to support the Senior Leadership Team and Extended Leadership Team decision making and monitoring/assuring finance and case management services.
• Embedding a change programme within administrative services to ensure that the right support is delivered to our lawyer and professional services team.
• Development of a continuous improvement culture within the Directorate to identify lessons learned and take action in response.
• Delivery of an IT Programme of work (2 years min) developing IT solutions to improve case management, knowledge sharing and financial reporting., The Met is committed to being an equitable (fair and impartial) and inclusive employer for disabled people, striving to have a diverse and representative workforce at all levels. We encourage applications from people from the widest possible range of backgrounds, cultures and experiences. We particularly welcome applications from people with disabilities and long-term conditions, ethnic minority groups and women.
As a Disability Confident employer, the Met has committed to making disability equality part of our everyday practice. We ensure that people with disabilities and those with long term conditions have the opportunities to fulfil their potential and realise their aspirations. The Met is committed to making reasonable adjustments to the recruitment process to ensure disabled applicants can perform at their best. If you need any reasonable adjustments or changes to the application and recruitment process, we ask that you include this information within your application form. All matters will be treated in strict confidence. Please note, if you are applying for a police officer role or to become a police community support officer (PCSO) or designated detention officer (DDO), there is a minimum requirement that you must pass a job-related fitness test (JRFT) at point of entry. This does not apply to police staff roles. Find out more about


• Strong understanding of finance and/or commercial processes within the MPS.
• Advanced, demonstrable experience of persuading, influencing, negotiating and challenging senior stakeholders (e.g. Directors and senior police officers) without direct authority in a diplomatic way.
• Good understanding of the organisational structure within the MPS, in particular how corporate services (e.g. finance and commercial services) are structured and be able to navigate it in order to make changes to processes.
• Demonstrable knowledge of how to manage and motivate teams delivering a casework service with high demand and short deadlines.
Essential Skills:
• Significant experience of working with finance and HR with an ability to develop a performance framework to be able to measure success.
• Strong ability to recognise opportunities for improvement, develop innovative solutions and drive strategic and operational improvements that impact business performance.
• Fully computer literate with proven experience of Microsoft Office suite in Excel, PowerPoint, Project, SharePoint, Visio, Word.
• Exceptional communicator, listener and influencer who is comfortable working autonomously setting the direction and objectives of a team.
Essential Experience:
• Adept at working collaboratively with internal and external partners and stakeholders in order to drive business outcomes.
• Managed and coordinated the delivery of business services.
• High-level stakeholder engagement / consultation skills, internally across the organisation and with external partners.
• Advanced experience of leading and managing people including complex HR cases. Experience of independently managing complex issues linked to unsatisfactory attendance and performance (UAP) as well as practice in managing multiple cases which may result in informal resolution or disciplinary action.
• Ability to manage projects on a local and national scale. Where the aim is to improve the service, we are providing and implement effective working principles.
Required Languages English Reports To Deputy Director for Professional Support and Business Services

The Directorate of Legal Services are the largest in-house police legal team in the country providing a range of legal advice and support to the whole of the Met and National Police Chief Council (NPCC). We undertake a vast range of work from civil litigation and commercial to operational policing and family disclosure advice.