Overview
Deputy Director Legal Group, Customs, Excise and Environmental Taxes Litigation Team – Bristol
About the job
Job summary
Leading HMRC’s Complex Litigation: Customs, Excise & Environmental Taxes
HMRC’s Legal Group plays a crucial role in supporting HMRC’s functions, handling everything from tax litigation to policy development. This Deputy Director position is a key leadership role within the Litigation Directorate, reporting to the Director of Litigation (Samantha Pullin). The Directorate itself is a large and dynamic team of around 700 professionals, including lawyers, litigators, paralegals, and business support colleagues, located across various UK sites.
The Litigation Directorate is responsible for conducting litigation on behalf of HMRC in relation to taxes and duties, some benefits and credits, enforcement and insolvency, and other areas relating to HMRC’s functions. The Directorate operates from locations like Stratford, Croydon, Bristol, Manchester, and Leeds, and is structured into seven teams.
In this role, you will lead the Customs, Excise and Environmental Taxes Litigation team. This team handles the most complex and high-value litigation concerning customs duties, excise (covering areas like alcohol and tobacco), and environmental taxes (such as landfill tax). The team conducts some cases before the First-tier (Tax) Tribunal and conducts appeals to higher courts, including the Supreme Court. The team also has conduct of judicial review claims in the relevant areas. The work is often novel, high-profile, and involves significant financial sums.
Job description
Key Responsibilities
- Lead and deliver effective litigation services for HMRC, supporting departmental objectives, within the customs, excise and environmental taxes arena.
- Provide strategic direction for high-quality, timely, and risk-based litigation, ensuring creative and practical legal solutions.
- Offer expert input on complex cases, particularly to senior colleagues.
- Ensure all litigation is Lexcel compliant and promotes knowledge sharing.
- Provide enterprise leadership for the Litigation Directorate and Legal Group, focusing on data, technology, knowledge management, and risk management.
- Foster an inclusive and empowering work environment, supporting colleague development and career progression
- Develop and maintain strong relationships with key stakeholders across HMRC and external organizations.
Key Interactions:
- Government Legal Department.
- Other Government Departments.
- Counsel
- Courts and Tribunals.
Person specification
Essential Qualifications:
- Qualified as a Solicitor or Barrister or Chartered Legal Executive and able to practice in England and Wales.
Essential Criteria:
- Experience of leading the delivery of effective and efficient legal services and conducting litigation within government or the public sector.
- Demonstration of excellent legal professional skills, including knowledge of litigation and public law, to provide strategic direction and input to support the delivery of high-quality, timely, efficient, risk-based litigation.
- A strong enterprise, collaborative and inclusive leader who can engage and inspire their team and the wider Directorate and drive and deliver transformation in accordance with strategic priorities.
- Demonstrable ability to understand diverse customer needs and develop and maintain senior stakeholder relationships internally and externally.
Desirable criteria:
- Knowledge of tax and law within the areas that align with the team’s work.
Benefits
Alongside your salary of £76,000, HM Revenue and Customs contributes £22,017 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.
As a Civil Service employee, you’ll be entitled to a large range of benefits.
This includes:
- 25 days annual leave on entry, increasing on a sliding scale to 30 days after 5 years’ service. This is in addition to your public holidays.
- This will be complemented by one further day paid privilege entitlement to mark the King’s Birthday.
- Interest-free loans allowing you to spread the cost of an annual travel season ticket or a new bicycle.
- Flexible working patterns and access to Flexible Working Schemes allowing you to vary your working day as long as you work your total hours.
- A competitive contributory pension scheme that you can enter as soon as you join and where we will make a significant contribution to the cost of your pension. Your contribution comes out of your salary before any tax is taken and will continue to provide valuable benefits for you and your family if you are too ill to continue to work or die before you retire.
- Generous paid maternity and paternity leave which is notably more than the statutory minimum offered by many other employers.
- Use of onsite facilities (where applicable).
- Occupational sick pay.
Things you need to know
Selection process details
Shortlist
The panel will assess the evidence provided in your CV and statement. Candidates whose applications best meet the essential criteria will be selected for interview.
HMRC is a Disability Confident leader and guarantees to interview candidates applying under the Disability Confidence Scheme who successfully meet the minimum selection criteria outlined in the person specification.
Assessment
If shortlisted, you will take part in the following assessments:
- Individual Leadership Assessment – a combination of psychometric assessments
Assessments are designed to support the panel’s decision making and highlight areas for further exploration at interview and do not result in a pass or fail decision.
Interview
You will attend a panel interview for a more in-depth discussion of your previous experience and professional competence. This will include a 5-minute verbal presentation (further information will be issued in advance).
Interviews are expected to take place in person at our Stratford Regional Centre in London.
For more information please refer to our candidate pack.
All Criminal Record Checks applications are considered fairly in accordance with the DBS Code of Practice and the Recruitment of ex-offenders Policy.
Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.
This role has a minimum assignment duration of 3 years. An assignment duration is the period of time a Senior Civil Servant is expected to remain in the same post to enable them to deliver on the agreed key business outcomes. The assignment duration also supports your career through building your depth of expertise.
As part of accepting this role you will be agreeing to the expected assignment duration set out above. This will not result in a contractual change to your terms and conditions. Please note this is an expectation only, it is not something which is written into your terms and conditions or indeed which the employing organisation or you are bound by. It will depend on your personal circumstances at a particular time and business needs, for example, would not preclude any absence like family friendly leave. It is nonetheless an important expectation, which is why we ask you to confirm you agree to the assignment duration set out above.
Security
Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.
Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window).
See our vetting charter (opens in a new window).
People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.
Nationality requirements
This job is broadly open to the following groups:
- UK nationals
- nationals of the Republic of Ireland
- nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
- nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
- nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
- individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
- Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service
Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)
Working for the Civil Service
The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.
We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission’s recruitment principles (opens in a new window).
The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.
The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.
Diversity and Inclusion
The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).
