The Scotland Office supports the Secretary of State for Scotland in promoting the best interests of Scotland within a stronger United Kingdom. It ensures the people of Scotland are fully and effectively represented at the heart of the UK Government, and the UK Government’s work is seen and felt in Scotland.
The Role
The Correspondence Manager role is an excellent opportunity to work at the heart of Government and to manage correspondence on a wide range of issues concerning Scotland. The successful candidate will join a friendly, collaborative team of 12 within the Private Office. They will report directly to one of the Secretary of State’s private secretaries, providing the chance to work closely with ministers to achieve their objectives. Your primary focus will be on managing the Scotland Office’s correspondence caseload, ensuring that correspondence for ministers and the department is accurately logged, drafted, and issued according to cross-government deadlines. Correspondence is an important part of the democratic process, and underlines the accountability of ministers to Parliament and the public. As such, we have ambitious targets and high standards for the quality and timeliness of all replies to correspondence, and you will need to work flexibly across the department to ensure these standards are met. You will also take responsibility for the management of write rounds and Freedom of Information (FOI) Requests for the Scotland Office. This includes managing the effective recording, compilation, and quality assurance of FOI responses, and developing a strong working understanding of the FOI Act to ensure that the department is fulfilling its statutory obligations in this area.
Key Responsibilities
- Ensure that correspondence is accurately logged, processed, and tracked. Manage the progression of correspondence to ensure responses are sent within departmental timescales.
- Manage the logging and processing of Freedom of Information requests to ensure responses fall within statutory deadlines. This includes drafting responses and providing high quality advice on the handling of FOI requests.
- Manage the Scotland Office’s write round processes, working closely with private secretaries and officials to ensure that Scotland Office returns are correctly processed.
- Manage the Scotland Office’s general enquiries inbox, drafting written responses to correspondence from members of the public using departmental lines.
- Monitor correspondence performance, providing regular statistics to ministers and proactively address challenges as they arise.
- Play a leading role in the Scotland Office’s engagement with the cross-government correspondence network.
- Support the continuous improvement of processes within your brief, working closely with the Scotland Office’s corporate team to integrate Artificial Intelligence into our ways of working.
Person Specification
Successful candidates should be:
- Proactive and able to manage their time effectively
- Able to deliver at pace and manage multiple cases at once
- A confident writer with a keen eye for detail
- Confident in building positive working relationships with a wide range of teams and other Government departments
Essential Skills
- Excellent written English and communication skills, including accurate grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
- Ability to work at pace and deliver against multiple deadlines.
- Proficiency in Google Workspace tools (or Microsoft Office), including Google Sheets and Google Docs.
- Comfortable working independently.
- Willing to work creatively to build AI into their processes.
Desirable Skills
- Existing understanding or training on the Freedom of Information Act.
- Confident and skilled in the use of IT and digital tools, including AI.
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