Vacancies

Vacancy Reference: 403919

The OPSS Legal team is a highly regarded team from a mixture of public sector and private practice backgrounds.  The team provides legal advice across all of OPSS’s functions. This is an exciting opportunity for a highly motivated lawyer with strong interpersonal skills who is able to work well within a team. This post reports directly to the Chief Legal Officer.

You will work closely with teams across the OPSS to provide pragmatic, solution focussed and high-quality legal advice. The scope of the role, reflecting the breadth of OPSS’s functions, is broad. We do not expect applicants to have existing expertise in all areas of OPSS’s work but you must be willing to advise on a wide range of matters across OPSS’ regulatory functions. In doing so, you will liaise with both DBT and other government departments’ legal advisors (GLD) as well as other regulators and commercial entities as appropriate.

Key Responsibilities:

You will have responsibility for a stimulating, wide-ranging portfolio of work which includes:

• Providing timely and high-quality legal advice to colleagues on a wide range of issues, both in respect of discrete requests for legal assistance and on larger matters;
• Building and maintaining relationships with enforcement colleagues to ensure effective legal input;
• Providing strategic legal advice when OPSS is considering, or has committed to, taking on new regulatory functions on behalf of other Government departments;
• Understanding policy perspectives and confidently presenting delivery solutions;
• Liaising with a range of partners, building relationships and furthering the achievement of OPSS’s strategic objectives in so doing;
• Advising on data protection and FOI issues;
• Making a contribution to the learning and development of the Legal team, as well as to the OPSS more broadly;
• Supervising more junior members of the team to ensure successful delivery of the team’s outputs.

Vacancy Reference: 405635

We are recruiting for Enforcement Officers within the Regulatory Impact Area at OPSS. The Regulation Impact Area’s work has real world impact, protecting people and places from product related harm.

We enforce a range of product-related regulations, deliver evidence-based solutions, and support business to meet their legal obligations. We enforce and deliver regulation with proportionality, through enforcement, engagement, and collaboration across-Government, and with local, national, and international regulators. We are a collaborative regulator, sharing our expertise and knowledge to lead and influence on both the domestic and global stage.

This is an exciting opportunity for dynamic and motivated individuals to make positive change happen within and beyond OPSS, and who are keen to build a stimulating career in the regulatory environment.  We offer a wide-ranging development package, which includes both internal and external learning and development opportunities. Our Regulation Impact Area is growing to meet the challenges of the future, and there are plenty of opportunities for people committed to their professional development, who are adaptable and flexible in their outlook, and can embrace the opportunities presented by an evolving team.

The Regulation Impact Area encompasses the following creative and impactful teams:

Construction Products – This team works with industry and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) to help the UK build better, safer buildings, ensuring that construction products meet their performance requirements and are safe.  Where construction products do not meet these requirements, we take the necessary enforcement action.

Products and Sectors Regulation – This team enforces a range of safety, security, environmental, accuracy and energy efficiency regulations across a wide variety of product types.  Our work spans most industry sectors, supporting Government priorities, by working closely with and on behalf of other Departments to deliver shared outcomes. This includes supporting growth, through providing a robust and fair regulatory environment in which businesses have confidence to invest and grow, whilst continually ensuring that consumers, places, and the environment are protected from product related harm. Our work also includes regulating products in new and emerging sectors, supporting business growth through innovation.

Online and Supply Chain Enforcement – The Online and Supply Chain Enforcement team works to ensure that consumers across the UK can feel as confident shopping online as they do on the UK’s High Streets; we are committed to preventing unsafe and non-compliant products entering the UK supply chain. This team delivers an innovative programme of enforcement activity, finding the right intervention points to stop bad actors within the supply chain, including at ports and fulfilment centers. The work is intelligence-led and includes proactively monitoring online marketplaces and other platforms who make products available to UK consumers. A range of enforcement activities are undertaken, including withdrawing and recalling products from sale and taking proportionate action, including prosecution.