21974 - Business Change Manager - Legal Aid Agency

Job Title & Grade: Business Change Manager, G7

Contract Type: Detached Duty/Loan - 24 months

Salary range (depending on location):

National - £58,511 - £65,329

London - £63,343 - £70,725

Please note that unless you are currently employed by the Civil Service and are earning more than the minimum above, if successful you will be offered the minimum for the grade depending on your location.

Location: National (any LAA office)

Please note that whilst this role is open to all Civil Servants, you can only apply for London, Cambridge and Brighton offices if you are a current LAA staff member based in those offices. This is due to and in line with the LAA's Location Strategy and the Cabinet Office's Places for Growth Strategy.

Important information for candidates choosing the Liverpool office

If you are successful and choose to be based in our Liverpool office, you will be required to complete Counter Terrorist Check (CTC) clearance in addition to our standard pre-employment checks.

To obtain CTC clearance, you must meet the current National Security Vetting residency requirements. Under Central Government policy, applicants must normally have been resident in the UK for the last 3 years to be eligible for this level of clearance.

Please consider this requirement carefully when applying if Liverpool is your preferred location.

Minimum Working Pattern:

If you are applying for a part time role, please note that to meet business demands we need cover for a minimum of 30 hours a week.

The Legal Aid Agency

We are an executive agency of the Ministry of Justice (MoJ). We are responsible for operationally administering the legal aid fund to provide criminal and civil legal aid advice to people in England and Wales.

Our people are at the heart of achieving excellence. Employing around 1,200 colleagues across England and Wales, we feel proud to have some of the best People Survey results in the Civil Service.

Transformation

Transformation are responsible for continuing to drive forward simplifying the delivery of legal aid. We want to improve the experience for the people who apply for legal aid, the providers who deliver the services and those of us in the LAA who administer the scheme, while ensuring the LAA remains a great place to work.

Transformation Team

This team is leading the transformation of our organisation through innovation, collaboration and inclusion. Originally established in May 2020, the Transformation Team has grown rapidly over the last five years. We are a hybrid team of business change and project delivery experts, and working in partnership with others is at the heart of what we do. We work together with teams across the agency, with the LAA Digital team, MoJ Project Delivery Function experts, MoJ Policy teams and wider stakeholders across the justice system and government.

The transformation portfolio spans multiple services, systems and functions, with significant impacts on:

• Front-line operational teams
• Policy design and implementation
• Digital systems and data
• External providers and partners

Job Summary

The Grade 7 Business Change Lead is responsible for leading the coordination and delivery of business change activity across the Legal Aid Agency transformation portfolio. You will provide professional leadership for business change, ensuring business change activity is coherent, prioritised, deliverable and successfully embedded across the organisation.

The role will be responsible for establishing and maintaining a strategic view of the Change Landscape across the portfolio, ensuring senior leaders have the insight required to make informed decisions on sequencing, prioritisation, business readiness and organisational capacity for change.

This role will play a leading role in shaping and maturing the Agency's business change capability, driving the development of standards, governance, tools and methodologies that improve transformation outcomes and support the successful delivery of organisational priorities.

Key Responsibilities:

Strategic Business Change Leadership

• Lead the development, implementation and continuous improvement of business change frameworks, standards and tools across the portfolio, working with the Head of Business Change to ensure consistent adoption.
• Provide credible, evidence based Change Management advice, guidance and constructive challenge to Senior Responsible Owners (SROs), Programme Directors and senior operational leaders on business change strategy, implementation and readiness.
• Accountable for providing senior-level assurance and advice on business readiness, cumulative change impact and organisational capacity, ensuring risks are visible and escalated through appropriate governance routes
• Ensure business change activities are embedded from strategy and design through to delivery, implementation and transition.
• Work with programme and operational leaders to identify and address readiness risks and barriers to successful implementation. Recommend and coordinate interventions where delivery confidence or organisational readiness is compromised.
• Ensure effective reporting of business change delivery progress, risks, issues and impacts which provide clear, actionable insight into change delivery performance, readiness and organisational impacts.
• Act as a senior business change adviser within governance structures, influencing strategic decisions relating to prioritisation and organisational readiness.
• Provide professional leadership, direction and coaching to business change colleagues and matrix teams, building capability and promoting consistent standards across the portfolio.
• Deputise for the Head of Business Change as required.

Portfolio Change Landscape Ownership

• Own and maintain the Portfolio-Level Change Landscape, providing a strategic portfolio-level assessment of business change activity and the cumulative impact on operational and corporate area capacity, and any associated change saturation risks.
• Identify emerging risks, dependencies, conflicts and opportunities across programmes and business areas, ensuring timely intervention and escalation where required.

Stakeholder Engagement and Influence

• Build and maintain influential relationships across operational, policy, digital and corporate service functions.
• Create a collaborative environment that enables consistent approaches to business change across organisational boundaries.

Essential Knowledge, Experience and skills

• Business Change Delivery – Experience of designing and leading strategic business change approaches for one or more large and/or complex programmes or projects, ensuring alignment with organisational priorities, wider government strategy and recognised change management principles.
• Change Landscape – Experience of developing, maintaining and articulating a strategic change landscape within a complex programme or portfolio environment, including cumulative impacts, dependencies, sequencing, organisational capacity and change saturation risks. Able to adapt reporting and communication for different senior audiences.
• Business Readiness – Experience of designing, leading and reporting on business readiness approaches for large or complex programmes/projects, including assessing operational impacts, influencing business areas, identifying readiness risks and aligning activity with programme governance and assurance frameworks.

• Stakeholder Management and Influence – Strong stakeholder engagement and influencing skills, with evidence of building effective relationships and networks across diverse business areas to secure collaboration, develop shared goals and deliver significant business change outcomes.

• Experience of working within and the ability to exercise sound judgement in a complex programme or portfolio environment, balancing competing priorities, managing dependencies and providing clear recommendations to senior leaders.

Desirable Knowledge, Experience and skills

• Relevant change, project or programme management qualification, accreditation or training, such as PROSCI (practitioner level), APMG Change Management Practitioner, MoP, MSP or equivalent.
• Experience of developing business change tools, standards, frameworks or governance products across a portfolio or transformation function.
• Experience working within government, public sector or regulated environments.

Assessment approach

Application Process

To apply please submit a CV and statement of suitability showing how you meet the essential criteria in no more that 1000 words.

Your statement should demonstrate your ability to do all the essential criteria listed, using examples can help strengthen your application.

Please note that we only require a Statement of Suitability for your application. The wording on this advert may suggest that an Experience question is also required, however this is not necessary.

Interview / assessment Process

If you are successful through the application stage, you will be invited to an interview / assessment centre in person or via Microsoft Teams where you will be assessed against the following:

Strengths relevant to the role and the following Behaviours:

• Communicating & Influencing
• Working Together
• Making Effective Decisions

Your Experience of implementing, promoting, or understanding diversity and inclusion policy - Diversity is the presence of difference, this can include one or more of the protected characteristics (Gender, Age, Race, Disability etc.) or it can be about working patterns, whether we like to jump into a task or reflect on it before acting. Inclusion is how we welcome, value, and celebrate diversity, giving everyone a voice, tapping into ideas, and enabling everyone to be themselves at work and achieve their potential.

For this grade/ role we would expect the candidate to demonstrate understanding of the terms Diversity and Inclusion and be able to explain why they are important in a work environment. We would also expect examples of action they have taken to embrace diversity (e.g., increasing understanding for self or others) or improve inclusion at a departmental level.

As part of the interview candidates will be required to prepare and deliver a presentation lasting no longer than 10 minutes assessing Business Change and Implementation, a technical skill in the Project Delivery Change Function. Candidates will need to present their completed presentation on screen.

Shortlisting is planned for week commencing 28th September 2026

Interviews are planned for week commencing 12th October 2026

If you would like more information on this opportunity, please contact – Connaire Magee at Connaire.Magee@justice.gov.uk

Our LAA commitment to 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 and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy.

As a Disability Confident organisation, we will offer a guaranteed interview to candidates with a disability who meet the essential criteria for this role. Under the Equality Act 2010 a disability is defined as a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on your ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities which has lasted, or is expected to last, at least 12 months.

If you are responding to a role within the Legal Aid Agency and would like to be considered under the guaranteed interview, please indicate this in your application and let us know of any reasonable adjustments you may require during the sift or later selection processes.

The LAA’s goal is to build an organisation that is open and inclusive and truly values and celebrates the diversity of its workforce. One that reflects and understands the needs of the diverse society we serve. This is regardless of social background, gender, age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, beliefs, disabilities or long-term illness or caring responsibilities.

Reasonable Adjustments

We are committed to ensuring our recruitment process is inclusive and accessible to all. If you have a disability or long-term condition (for example dyslexia, anxiety, autism, a mobility condition or hearing loss) and need us to make any reasonable adjustments to support you through the recruitment process, please let us know by adding the information to the applications system or emailing LAARecruitment@justice.gov.uk after you have applied so that we can discuss options with you.

Complaints procedure

If you have any complaints about this recruitment activity, please share your concerns by emailing LAARecruitment@justice.gov.uk initially. We aim to respond to any complaint within 10 working days.