Child Maintenance Service Performance Briefing Manager and Customer Insight Manager

About the job

• Benefits
• Things you need to know
• Apply and further information

• Location
• Parklands, Callendar Business Park, Falkirk, FK1 1XT
• Pedmore House, Waterfront East, Level Street, Dudley, DY5 1XA
• Crown Building, 60 Wellington Street, Leicester, LE1 6DS
• Benton Park View, Benton Park Road, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE7 7NE
• Lacuna Place, Havelock Road, Hastings, TN34 1BG
• Great Western House, Woodside Ferry Approach, Birkenhead, CH41 6DA
• Clearbrook House, Bickleigh Down Business Park, Plymouth, PL6 7TN

Please note that for candidates requesting to work in Newcastle, this role is based at Benton Park View and will relocate to 1 Pilgrim Place in Newcastle city centre by the end of 2027.

About the job

Job summary

As the UK government’s largest public service provider, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is responsible for welfare, pensions and child maintenance policies.

The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) supports parents who are unable to reach a private financial agreement by ensuring – and when necessary, enforcing – their legal responsibility to contribute to their child’s living costs. Our mission is simple: to get money to children, because it makes a real difference in their lives.

While we’ve made significant progress in transforming our service, we remain ambitious about what more we can achieve for the families who rely on us. CMS is a dynamic and rewarding place to work. Step into any of our service centres and you’ll find passionate, dedicated professionals committed to supporting our customers.

We are proud to foster an inclusive and diverse workforce where everyone can thrive. If you're looking to make a difference, this could be the career for you.

This is a fantastic opportunity to start or grow a fulfilling career in the Civil Service. We offer a flexible work-life balance, along with opportunities for growth, challenge, and personal development.

Job description

To lead and support performance discussions with senior operational leaders, line of business leaders, stakeholders, contractor and operation leaders. Provide support and/or partner with others to conduct performance investigations into line of business service delivery gaps/issues ensuring solutions provide value for money. Produce briefings, reporting packs and performance insight and analysis.

Identify and flag performance risks and failure demand ensuring that action is taken to address, prevent or ameliorate risk.

Lead and develop the Child Maintenance Insight team, ensuring high-quality insight is gathered, analysed and communicated effectively.

Drive a customer-focused culture by translating feedback and data into actionable recommendations that influence service improvement, operational performance and strategic decision-making.

Key Responsibilities

Monitoring performance, researching and investigating performance & customer related issues.

Providing delivery of high quality reporting and presentation of performance results and customer insight & feedback.

Engage & collaborate with key stakeholders both internal and external in order to capitalise on improvement opportunities, drive timescales and facilitate positive outcomes for our customers.

Support the CMS Senior Leadership team by supplying and analysing collated performance MI, conducting trend analysis and anticipating hotspots, making recommendations for improvements and highlighting compliance issues.

Represent CMS Senior Leaders, as required, making sound recommendations and decisions that are future proofed, appropriate and efficient.

Work effectively with Performance Business Partners to help achieve organisational objectives.

Person specification

Essential Criteria

Your personal statement will be assessed against the following essential criteria. Please ensure you provide specific, evidence-based examples that clearly demonstrate how you meet each one:

Ability to identify, interpret and analyse complex information, including Management Information, and other data to identify areas for action, key risks and performance hotspots and use this to make sound judgements and recommendations. (Lead Criteria)

Strong collaboration and influencing skills with the ability to build strong effective relationships with all business partners and a wide stakeholder group at all levels to drive performance and business improvement.

Experience of working at pace in a pressurised environment and meeting demanding deadlines.

Excellent communication and interpersonal skills with the ability to influence and motivate people at all levels, building trust with stakeholders to achieve business goals.

The ability to clearly and concisely present complex information and evaluations to senior leaders and key stakeholders.

Confidently deliver written and verbal communications to a very high standard – Ministerial, Senior Leader, TU, Operational and wider DWP colleagues.

Excellent and innovative presentation skills, as well as experience using MS Excel, MS Teams, Sharepoint and MS PowerPoint.

Desirable Criteria

Practical and proven knowledge of performance measures, reporting and sound awareness of the full Customer Journey.

Experience of using Performance tools and / or Qlik, and or building profiles and performance recovery flightpaths.

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Leadership
• Communicating and Influencing
• Making Effective Decisions
• Delivering at Pace

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £38,772, Department for Work and Pensions contributes

£11,232 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme.

Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).

New entrants are expected to join on the minimum of the pay band.

Working for DWP will include benefits such as learning and development tailored to your role, an environment with flexible working options, a culture encouraging inclusion and diversity.

Annual Leave

23 days annual leave rising with service to 30 days, plus public holidays.

Flexi Time

Access to flexible working hours scheme will be available.

Hybrid Working

This role may be suitable for hybrid working, which is where an employee works part of the week in their DWP office and part of the week from home . This is a voluntary, non-contractual arrangement and your office will be your contractual place of work.

If a hybrid working arrangement is suitable for the role and for you, you will normally be required to spend a minimum of 60% of your contracted working hours from your DWP office.

If you have a disability, caring responsibilities, or other circumstances that may affect your ability to meet the minimum office attendance requirement, please discuss this with us using the contact details in this advert.

Working Hours

The Department’s contracted working hours are:

• Monday to Friday: 07:45 to 20:00
• Saturday: 08:45 to 17:00

Employees are contracted to work a set number of hours per week within these timeframes.

• For full-time employees, this is 37 net hours per week (equivalent to 42 gross hours, including meal breaks).
• For part-time employees, the number of hours will be proportionally less, based on their contract.

Employees are expected to work the full number of hours for which they are contracted.

See the Candidate Pack for more of the benefits available to as a Civil Servant.

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window) , and will assess your Behaviours, Strengths and Experience.

Eligibility

Visa Sponsorship

Please note that for these vacancies we recommend that applicants seek specialist advice on their eligibility for Visa Sponsorship (if applicable) when considering whether to apply for any role.

We can never guarantee sponsorship, requests will be considered in line with the relevant DWP guidance and Home Office policy in place at the time.

Location

Applicants should only apply for roles where they can reasonably commute to and from their selected home office location daily .

Selection Process Details

As part of the application process, you will be asked to submit a CV and 1250 word Personal Statement.

Important Information Regarding Anonymisation ​

When completing your application form, CV and personal statement you must remove any personal details that could be used to identify you. This includes name and contact details which might usually appear on a CV or personal statement.

Failure to do so will result in your application being withdrawn.

Personal Statement

Write an evidence-based statement demonstrating your suitability for the role, reflecting on the essential criteria outlined in the Job Description.

Your evidence-based statement should be no longer than 1250 words. Avoid generalised claims – focus instead on specific examples that highlight your achievements. For each example, explain the context, the challenges you faced, the actions you took, and the outcomes you achieved.

Sift

The sift panel will assess your evidence-based statement to evaluate your experience, skills, and knowledge against the essential criteria outlined in the job advert. To progress to the next stage of the application process, you must provide clear and sufficient evidence demonstrating how you meet these criteria.

If we receive a high volume of applications, an initial sift may be conducted using the lead criterion: Ability to identify, interpret and analyse complex information, including Management Information, and other data to identify areas for action, key risks and performance hotspots and use this to make sound judgements and recommendations. Candidates who pass this initial sift may either proceed to a full sift or be invited directly to interview.

CV

Your CV is for reference/context only and is not scored , put the main content of your evidence and skills in your personal statement.

Interview

The interview will assess your behaviours and strengths.

A presentation will also be assessed, further details will be sent to you when you get to interview stage.

For the purposes of the selection process, the Lead Behaviour will be Leadership .

Your interview will be conducted by video (MS Teams).

See the Personal Statement Guidance and Candidate Pack attachments for full details of the application and selection process.

Approximate campaign timeline:

• Sift Period: 29 September - 2 October 2026
• Interviews: 19 - 23 October 2026
• Results/Offers: 28 October 2026
• Security & ID Checks: November 2026
• Start Dates: December 2026

Sometimes we might decide to invite all candidates straight to interview without assessing the written application evidence, therefore sift and interview dates are subject to change.

Provisional Offer of Employment

If you receive a provisional offer of employment, please note that the pre-employment checking process can take up to 8 weeks for external candidates. (Refer to the candidate pack for details regarding the required documentation.)

In some cases, a conditional offer may be made. This means you could begin your role before all checks are completed. However, if any of the outstanding checks are unsuccessful, your employment may be terminated.

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