FIS deploy the full range of powers and approaches to protect funding for UK public services, from surveillance and undercover operations to communications interception and cyber ops; investigating the most harmful tax cheats and ensuring nobody is beyond our reach. This plays an important part in building trust in the compliant majority and reinforces the Department`s fair and even-handed approach.

Within FIS a variety of threats are targeted, including complex offshore evasion, international smuggling of illicit excise goods, exports of controlled weapons and technology, labour market abuses, VAT and Self-Assessment repayment frauds and a host of other fraud attacks targeted at the tax system.

We are looking for an strong leader with the vision and energy to take forward and deliver sustainable transformation that guarantees an effective Fraud Investigation Service now and for the future. The move to a single operational command will furnish teams that are providing an enabling or service function with a clear national identity, and deliver investigation services in a nationally consistent, flexible and business-like way.

Key Priorities
• The approach and tools used in fraud investigation have remained relatively static for many years, with limited, small scale change. The limit of what incremental change can deliver has been reached, and overall delivery of capabilities and professionalism is threatened, both in terms of sustaining current output levels and building resilience for what the future brings. The Investigation Services Directorate will address this challenge by creating and leading centralised and coordinated access to investigation tools, services and specialisms to meet the evolving needs of our business whilst driving equality and consistency of casework nationally.
• Bringing together both traditional support and specialist capability into one Deputy Director leadership span, the core of the new Investigation Services directorate will be formed from existing investigation support teams and a range of specialists across the Fraud Investigation Service including Forensic Accountants and Insolvency Practitioners. You will lead this strategic approach to the deployment of resources, delivering a more consistent and high-quality product, and prioritising access to very specialist services.
• You will lead teams through the challenge of balancing which cases to prioritise for support within limited resources and engage constantly with the business to ensure that demand is met across a national picture. This will be a real shift change in concept to the current local, regional level management arrangements.
• The timing of this is critical; linking into the HMRC strategic location strategy, in 2020-2021 nine of the thirteen Investigation Services Hub sites will move to their long-term Regional Centre of specialist site locations.
Responsibilities • As the successful candidate you will responsible for ensuring that the Investigation Services Hubs successfully land in the business and deliver a sustained quality and highly professional service as part of a significant transformational change involving approx 800 FTE.
• As leader of this change, you will be accountable for ensuring that this happens within expected timeframes, that all organisational design requirements are completed successfully in order to move staff to this new way of working. You will lead a small team of staff to ensure this transition occurs successfully and will be responsible for all aspects of its delivery.
• FIS delivery of key business targets relies on the availability of specific support, which will be delivered under this new command, therefore strong engagement across the FIS Senior Leadership Team to ensure collaborative working will be a key element in driving this forward.
• Certain types of support must meet casework standards and therefore part of your role will require attention to detail to understand and ensure that managers and team leaders comply with relevant legislation. You will be also be responsible for driving up capability within the Investigation Service Hubs with the expectation that services provided by the new directorate will expand in line with demand and changes in technology.
• Accountability for the management of significant budgets, IT licenses and commercial contracts for the delivery of some of the more specialist support services is crucial to the overall management of this new structure, and you will need sound judgement to ensure value for money and that capacity meets demand.
• The inclusion of specialist support within the new Investigation Services directorate will require the successful candidate to keep up to date with technical knowledge around such specialisms as Insolvency and Forensic Accountancy in order to lead with credibility. Some of the overall responsibility for these skills sit elsewhere within the Civil Service, such as BEIS so it will be important that you build and maintain excellent relations to ensure that knowledge is shared and skills remain up to date.
• As this will be a completely new way of working for a large number of staff, there will be a requirement to ensure that the right culture is created and that teams can collaborate and thrive under your management. You will set out your expectations and clearly and effectively build the Investigation Services culture around how teams will work in line with HMRC’s values and commitments; ensuring that staff feel valued in the role they perform
• FIS is committed to creating the most diverse, inclusive and supportive environment for all colleagues, where HMRC values and behaviours are demonstrated at every level of the organisation. The successful candidate will play an integral role in ensuring all colleagues feel valued and respected at work and role model the behaviours that enable this within their new command.