Job Summary
This role will require frequent travel to Weybridge central London and other key APHA locations to support your leadership and visibility of your directorate.
APHA has agreed a set of collective accountabilities for its Executive board members. As an Executive Board, you provide the collective strategic leadership that drives APHA’s performance, culture, and long-term direction. Together, you ensure the Agency operates with clarity of purpose, aligning its work with APHA’s mission, Defra’s priorities, and the wider objectives of public service.
You will play a central role in shaping and sustaining the organisation’s vision, values, and culture, supporting the Chief Executive in leading APHA with integrity, ambition, and a commitment to excellence.
You are collectively responsible for ensuring that APHA is governed effectively. This includes maintaining robust governance arrangements, enabling sound decision-making, and ensuring accountability across all areas of the organisation. You oversee the identification and management of strategic and operational risks, ensuring that statutory obligations, regulatory requirements, and internal policies are consistently met.
As stewards of public resources, you provide oversight of financial planning, budgeting, and investment decisions, ensuring that APHA delivers value for money and remains financially sustainable. You scrutinise financial performance and support the Chief Executive in maintaining strong relationships with Defra finance teams and external auditors.
You champion the development of APHA’s people and organisational capability. This includes promoting diversity and inclusion, upholding Civil Service values, and providing strategic oversight of workforce planning, talent development, and succession planning. You monitor organisational health, including staff engagement, wellbeing, and representation, ensuring APHA remains a supportive and high-performing place to work.
You represent APHA at the highest levels, engaging with Defra, other government departments, industry bodies, devolved administrations, and international partners. Through this, you help build trust, transparency, and collaboration across the wider Defra group and the sectors APHA serves.
You collectively drive organisational performance, providing constructive challenge to ensure high standards of delivery, continuous improvement, and innovation. You monitor progress against strategic objectives, KPIs, and delivery milestones, identifying where intervention or acceleration is required. You champion a culture of accountability, evidence-based decision-making, and results-driven leadership, supporting the Chief Executive in embedding performance frameworks that drive excellence across the organisation.
Above all, you act as a unified leadership body, sharing accountability for APHA’s performance and upholding the principles of public service, integrity, and impartiality. You model the highest standards of leadership and ethical conduct, ensuring APHA delivers for ministers, stakeholders, and the public.
Key Responsibilities
- LeadershipSets organisational strategy and provides clear strategic direction for APHA’s change and transformation portfolio, ensuring programmes are prioritised, sequenced and resourced to deliver max
- imum valueLead development of APHA’s long-term operating model, ensuring alignment to the Agency’s strategic ambitions and Defra Group
- objectivesAct as a key adviser to the CEO, Directors and Defra Group partners on transformation, organisational change, and major deli
- LeadershipOwn and lead the APHA change and transformation portfolio, ensuring coherent delivery across all change activity. Oversee and assure all major programmes
- including:EU Reset Programme – ensuring APHA systems, processes and capability meet new regulatory and trading r
- equirementsAPHA Synergy – driving cross-Agency, cross-functional alignment, enhanced data integration, and streamlined
- operationsDelivering Sustainable Futures Programme – ensuring APHA is future-ready, digitally enabled, financially sustainable an
- d resilientAPHA Change Projects – from people change to digital mod
- ernisation.Ensure programmes deliver intended benefits, secure value for money, and operate within agreed cost, time and quality
- tolerancesSponsor and chair governance boards, ensuring compliance with Defra, CO and HM Treasury standards (including GMPP wher
Capability & Leadership of Project Delivery
- y and ChangeLead and develop APHA’s project, programme and change professions, including PMO, portfolio management, business change and transformation
- specialistsDrive professional capability uplift aligned to the Government Project Delivery Framework and O PD standardsEnsure robust assurance, risk management and delivery methodologies are embedded
Person Specification
The successful candidate will be able to demonstrate
ntial Criteria:Extensive experience of leading large‑scale change and transformation portfolioswithin complex, operational or regulated organisations, delivering clear strategic outcome
s and benefits.Strong track record of delivering organisational, digital and/or process change at scale, translating strategy into improved performance, resilience and w
ays of working.Significant experience of developing and leading an organisation‑wide coaching and continuous improvement culture, building leadership capability and sustainable c
hange capacity.Proven leadership of Project Delivery, Programme and Change professionals, including the development of high‑performing, multi‑disciplinary and geographically d
ispersed teams.Highly developed strategic thinking, influencing and problem‑solving skills, with the ability to operate credibly at Executive and Board level and shape complex d
ecision‑making.Strong financial, commercial and risk management capability, alongside the ability to build trusted partnerships with senior stakeholders across multiple
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