Director General Communities

The Scottish Government seeks a Director General for Communities to lead a team of senior directors and oversee a substantial budget. This strategic leader will focus on eradicating child poverty, enhancing public services, and fostering economic growth. Responsibilities include collaborating with Cabinet Secretaries, managing 1,250 staff, and driving transformational change initiatives. The role requires significant executive leadership experience, particularly in complex organisations, alongside a commitment to diversity and inclusion. Candidates must provide a CV and a supporting statement addressing specific experience criteria and will undergo assessments, including interviews and psychological evaluations, in August.

Job Description

Are you a visionary and strategic leader with the drive to shape, influence, and deliver transformative change across a diverse portfolio of responsibilities?

As Director General for Communities at the Scottish Government, you will lead a dynamic team of seven Directors, Agency Chief Executive, Agency Chief Operating Officer and Chief Social Policy Advisor. Your leadership will foster an inclusive culture where diverse talent thrives, while enhancing the visibility and accessibility of the organisation to external stakeholders.

This role involves close collaboration with Cabinet Secretaries and Ministers, ensuring your DG area provides exemplary civil service support. You will lead on problem-solving, cross-government collaboration, and the orchestration of major programmes. As a key driver of the Government’s top priorities, you will oversee transformational change initiatives, major portfolio projects, and the corporate Performance Delivery Framework – ensuring effective delivery, strong performance, and meaningful outcomes across the DG family.

In line with your DG colleagues, you will have specific corporate roles, including acting as a Champion of our diversity and inclusion agenda. You will also be a member of the Corporate Board, which brings together the Executive Team with our Non-Executive Directors, and you will also play a key leadership role in our wider Corporate Governance System.

Responsibilities

Reporting directly to the Permanent Secretary, you will:

• Provide strategic leadership in coordinating and fostering collaboration across the Scottish Government and with  external partners to effectively implement actions to enable the eradication of child poverty, ensuring successful delivery of targeted interventions.
• Have responsibility for a number of Director-level reports and will be responsible for approximately 1250 staff and a budget of £22bn.
• Oversee seven Public Bodies and Executive Agencies including Social Security Scotland who deliver 15 benefits to eligible applicants in Scotland.
• Provide direct support to the Cabinet Secretaries for Social Justice; Housing and Finance and Local Government, First Minister and Cabinet.
• Be recognised as a senior leader and role model, cutting through silos and organisational boundaries in developing leadership capacity and aligning resources in support of the National Performance Framework.
• Make a visible commitment to developing a high performing Director General family with a strong, inclusive, positive working culture.
• Lead on local government finance, relations and the Verity House Agreement.
• Deliver the ambition set out in the Housing to 2040 strategy including supporting the delivery of the Affordable Housing Supply Programme and the overall Scottish Governments response to the Housing Emergency Drive forward work to address some of the most pressing and pivotal societal issues in Scotland.

Key Priority Areas

Your primary focus will be to provide assurance to Ministers around the delivery of several key priorities. The Government’s focus on tackling child poverty, improving public services and growing the economy are key to the role.

Eradicating Child Poverty:

• The Child Poverty Delivery Plan
• Investing in the Third Sector and enabling Financial Wellbeing in households and Communities  
• Delivering Carer Support Payment and launch Carer’s Additional Person Payment
• Scottish Child Payment
• Investing in Housing and preventing Homelessness

Improving Public Services:

• Strengthening implementation of Human Rights
• Implementing Equally Safe Delivery plan to prevent and eradicate violence against women and girls
• Delivering our Disability Equality Plan 
• Working with third sector to embed anti-racism and advance the Race Equality Framework

Growing the Economy:

• Delivering the Affordable Housing Supply Programme

Success Profile

It is essential that you can provide evidence in your application of the professional experience and skills required for this role. In addition, candidates applying for roles with the government agencies and public bodies in Scotland are assessed in line with the Success Profiles framework that is used across the Civil Service.

This means that as well as evidencing the professional experience and skills you will also be expected to evidence behaviours at the level required for this Senior Civil Service role.

Experience:

Leadership at Executive Team and Board level – Significant experience of leading the development and delivery of organisational strategy in a large and complex organisation, within government, the public sector or private sector. This includes achieving measurable outcomes across a range of specialist subject areas, through effective cross-boundary working and partnership with a wide range of stakeholders. Proven ability to deliver strategic objectives at pace and sustain them through periods of ambiguity and organisational change.

Behaviours:

• Seeing the big picture (Level 6)
• Delivering at pace (Level 6)
• Leadership (Level 6)
• Communicating and Influencing (Level 6)
• Making effective decisions (Level 6)

You can find out more about Success Profiles Behaviours, including descriptors for each level on our website.

How to apply

Candidates must apply online, providing a CV and supporting statement (of no more than 500 words) that directly addresses the Experience criteria listed in the Success Profile above. General or unrelated statements will not be accepted and may result in your application being sifted out. Please ensure your statement clearly demonstrates how you meet the specified experience requirements.

During the interview and assessment process we will test your skills and experience as well as behaviours aligned to this role.

If you are shortlisted you will be provided with full details of the next stages of the selection and assessment process. This may include an individual psychological assessment and a stakeholder /staff engagement exercise.

Assessments are scheduled for the weeks commencing 11th, 18th and 25th August however this may be subject to change.

The Final Interview Panel take place in person in St Andrews House, Regent Road Edinburgh EH1 3DG. Interviews will be chaired by Liz Walmsley, Civil Service Commission.