Deputy Assistant Commissioner
Post: Deputy Assistant Commissioner (DAC)
Salary range £79,653 – £99,701
Closing date: Friday, 14 October 2022 (16:00hrs)
London Fire Brigade (LFB) is seeking highly motivated, talented and adaptable applicants who have the vision, leadership skills and potential to become part of the Brigade’s top management team. Do you have what we are looking for?
London is one of the largest fire rescue services in the world, serving a complex and dynamic city of 8.9 million residents as well as those who work in or visit the city.
We are looking for the best people to lead the organisation to shape our services to provide London with a world class fire and rescue service, which is trusted to serve and protect London’s diverse communities.
It is an exciting and challenging time to join us. We continue to focus our efforts on prevention and protection, as well as providing a first-class operational response to a wide range of emergencies. We have made big changes in recent years, taking bold decisions to set the Brigade in the strongest possible position at a time of public sector savings. Further challenges lie ahead, particularly in light of the pandemic, and continuing to respond and improve following HMICFRS inspections and the Grenfell Inquiry.
We have made important progress in terms of the diversity profile of our staff, but there is much more to do. London is a wonderfully diverse city and we have an ambitious Togetherness Strategy to build Diversity & Inclusion into all our work. This sets out our commitment to promoting fairness and tackling discrimination, and how we’re working to remove the barriers that stop people reaching their full potential.
The role
Working with the London Fire Commissioner, Directors and Assistant Commissioners,
DACs are key leaders in ensuring that the London Fire Brigade is trusted to serve and protect London. DACs deliver this by ensuring the Brigade is a dynamic, forward-looking organisation of fully engaged people at the centre of the communities we serve, adapting to the needs of London. To support this, you will be responsible for the delivery of the London Fire Commissioner’s strategic aims of:
- Placing a premium on leadership skills and investing in leadership at all levels.
- Fostering and embedding a culture of togetherness so that every member of staff feels
respected and valued regardless of their gender, sexuality, colour of skin, race or religion
and that everyone feels able to bring their whole self to work, feeling a sense of belonging in the Brigade because they can be themselves. - Developing the Brigade’s long-term strategy to become a forward-thinking service led
organisation, with communities at the heart of its delivery, prioritising the development,
launch and delivery its Community Risk Management Plan. - Building on the Brigade’s improvement plans deliver continuous improvement across its
operational and support functions ensuring excellence and efficiency in everything it
delivers.
DACs are responsible for planning, directing, and delivering the services provided by a designated function ensuring continual improvement in efficiency and performance and compliance with regulations and the law. You will play a full leadership role within the office of the London Fire Commissioner (“the LFC”) as a member of the appropriate Departmental Management Team.
You would join the DAC’s operational rota and would be mobilised to operational incidents to perform monitoring and incident command functions and represent the Brigade at Strategic Command. You would also play an integral role in managing the Brigade’s Strategic Response Arrangements. These roles and responsibilities represent a significant operational and strategic management commitment and will require provision of a standby or call out base in London.
Eligibility
To be eligible for promotion, all internal applicants must:
1. Have been signed off as a competent and substantive Group Commander.
2. Be Level 2 Incident Command qualified and in ticket.
3. Have line management approval and sign off and have no live disciplinary sanctions.
4. Applicants must hold a full UK manual driving licence.
To be eligible to apply, all external applicants must:
1. Be a serving wholetime operational, substantive, and competent Group Manager/Commander in a UK local authority fire and rescue service. We do not accept applications from on-call applicants currently undertaking a temporary, casual or zero-hour wholetime contract (or contracts to that effect).
2. Be Level 2 Incident Command qualified and in ticket.
3. Be free of any current formal disciplinary sanctions.
4. Applicants must hold a full UK manual driving licence.
The person will be able:
- To provide motivational leadership to the relevant function and secure staff commitment to support the delivery of the LFC aims and objectives.
- To provide leadership to the Department as an integral member of the Departmental Management Team.
- To lead, support and deliver corporate projects, as required.
- To be a champion of diversity and equality of opportunity for staff and to ensure that that the LFC equalities policies are implemented effectively.
- To ensure the relevant function’s resources (people and financial) are deployed and controlled effectively to secure the LFC overall business objectives and Integrated Risk Management Plan.
- To maintain, under continuous review, the effectiveness of the role and responsibilities within the relevant function.
- To ensure the development and implementation of programmes to drive efficiency and performance improvements and to ensure the effective development of strategic partnerships with government, local authorities, and other agencies to deliver improved service performance.
Assessment Overview
How to apply
Your application should include:
1. Your CV
Please include your current or most recent salary, and the name and contact details of two referees, one of whom must be your current line manager.
2. Your supporting statement evidencing suitability to be considered for the role of Deputy Assistant Commissioner against the essential knowledge, skills, experience and competencies in the role profile provided. Your statement should not exceed 2000 words. Please give clear examples where you meet the criteria. In the application form, four text boxes are available for you to type your statement (You are allowed 4,000 characters per text box).
Application closing date: 14 October 2022 (16:00)
Initial shortlisting based on your CV and supporting statement, this will decide if you go forward to the next stage of the assessment process.
Assessment process
The assessment process will comprise the following four stages with expected timeframes.
Stage 1: Shortlisting (as detailed above). This is a sift.
Stage 2: Knowledge Test. 75% or above is required to proceed to the next stage. We advise applicants to begin styding for the test now – w/c 24 October 2022. Pass/Fail.
Stage 3: Initial Sift Interview and Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) Exercise – w/c 24 October 2022. This is a sift.
The interview will be based on the contents of your CV/Cover Letter and allow you to expand on your relevant knowledge, skills, and experience at DAC level. A minimum of 70% is required. These short-listing interviews will last no longer than 30 minutes. The EDI assessment is included so you can demonstrate your commitment to, and knowledge of diversity and inclusion. This exercise may take the form of a presentation, a role-play or online exercise relevant to the DAC role. Candidates taking part in this element will be given some preparatory guidance material. Candidates will be required to achieve 75% or above in total, however we will allow for a 5% margin in accordance with the exigencies of the service.
Stage 4: Incident Command Exercise – w/c 07 November 2022
Successful candidates from the previous stage will be invited to an Incident Command Exercise. Those candidates that successfully complete all of the remaining stages and are deemed promotable will be enrolled on the level 3 incident command acquisition course. Any candidate who has already attended and passed an LFB recognised level 3 incident command acquisition course or revalidation assessment within two years of the date that stage 2 results are released, will not need to complete this course.
Stage 4: Psychometric tests, Interviews (a score of at least 70%) and Presentation. Late-November/early-December 2022
The Psychometric Test will be a personality type test and will include an online questionnaire and telephone call from an external Occupational Psychologist, the results of which will be shared with the main panel interviewers.
The interview section will consist of Stakeholder Panel Interview and Main Panel Structured Interview.
Stakeholder Panel interviews will consist of selected stakeholders who will be invited to participate in an informal interview of the candidates. They will then give their thoughts and feedback to the main panel for their consideration. Records of notes will be kept for audit purposes, but the stakeholder interview is not part of the sift process.
Structured Interview questions will be based on the LFB Behaviours and will be relevant to the DAC role and will provide an opportunity to the candidate to describe the experience, knowledge, and skills they have developed in that role in temporary positions or through acting up. Structured interviews at DAC rank will last no more than 60 minutes.
The presentation will be unseen and based on a relevant topic, given to candidates on the day. Candidates will have 50 minutes preparation time before delivering a 10-minute presentation.
Additional Information
If you would like to find out more about the role, we will be running a Q & A session via Teams w/c 03 October 2022. If you would like to join please email assessmentcentre@london-fire.gov.uk with your contact details and an invite will be sent to you.
Please ensure you give yourself enough time to complete and submit your application. Late or un-submitted applications cannot be accepted.
Please note any correspondence received from us will be via e-mail and sent to the address you provide on your application form.
We value the diversity of our employees and aim to recruit a workforce which reflects our diverse communities across London. The London Fire Commissioner is an Equal Opportunities Employer and we positively welcome applications from all suitably qualified individuals, irrespective of people’s age, disability, gender, race or ethnicity, religion or belief, sexual orientation, or other personal circumstances. We have guidance in place to ensure that all applicants are treated fairly and consistently at every stage of the recruitment process, including the consideration of reasonable adjustments for people who have a disability.
In line with the Basic Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) employment checks will be completed by successful candidates, which will include a basic criminal records check. Successful candidate will be required to declare any convictions for offences which are not spent under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 and any offer of employment is subject to the LFC receiving a criminal records disclosure which it considers satisfactory. Successful candidates should apply to the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) to get a copy of their criminal record and share the original disclosure certificate with the LFC. The check will only show convictions that are not ‘spent’. It will cost the successful candidates £23 (current charge) and usually takes up to 14 days.
Further information about us can be found on the our website.
