Job Description - Head of Property

The aim of the Central Operations Directorate is to create and maintain an effective, efficient, and resilient workplace experience across the Bank of England, embracing new ways of working in safe and secure ways. Within Central Operations, our Property Division is responsible for the Bank’s entire property estate, including our facilities and maintenance operations, covering all our sites across the UK.

The Head of Property role is a critical and exciting one, with full responsibility for ensuring that the physical needs of the Bank of the England are continuously met through its property portfolio. This includes our landmark, Grade I Listed, Threadneedle Street site, and nearby Moorgate offices, as well as our sites across the UK including Essex, Leeds, and smaller hub locations, helping the Bank to connect with, and represent the people from across the country.

This is a real opportunity to shape and lead our team as the Head of Property, ensuring all our premises and facilities remain fit for purpose, both now and looking to the future. This includes sponsorship of crucial obsolescence projects, critical strategic enhancements of our premises, and oversight of the Bank’s 20-year Property Plan. The role also presents an opportunity as we embed our hybrid working model and achieve our ambition to expand more widely across the UK, in our pursuit of being a Central Bank that best represents the people that we serve.

The role-holder will seize every opportunity to incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion into the adaptation and enhancement of Bank premises, and take pride in leading a professional, talented, and experienced Property Team.

The successful candidate will need to be highly experienced and a confident negotiator, with a proven track-record of achieving value for money and managing supplier relationships within a corporate real estate environment. You will care deeply about your role in achieving carbon savings and maintaining prestigious premises which are home to the Bank’s critical national infrastructure and UK Gold Reserves, as well as our 5,000 colleagues.

As Head of Property, you will lead the entire function, providing strategic advice to and taking direction directly from the Executive Director’s office. This role will act as line manager for both the Head of Infrastructure and the Head of Workplace & Estates Management and will be responsible for guiding and directing these teams. In addition, the Head of Property will be responsible for working collaboratively with each of the Central Operations functions to ensure that day-to-day service delivery and supply management aligns to Bank’s corporate strategy and policy. The service delivery functions will all look to the Head of Property to act as point of escalation for any issues.

Key responsibilities include:

· Strategic Focus – setting the strategic direction for the Bank’s estate and for the delivery model of all Facilities Management and Property related services.

· FM and Estates Management – own the end-to-end Facilities and Property service delivery ensuring full continuity of the Bank’s business operations and driving a culture of excellence and innovation in customer experience.

· Strategic Portfolio and Project Management – deliver an estate that exceeds requirements by maximising space, value for money and market opportunities, finding alternative ways of working, and ensuring all projects are aligned to strategy, timing, and budget.

· Finance – own the Property budget and reporting, developing budget plans to ensure that spending is effective and in line with the strategic priorities of the Bank.

· Stakeholder Relationships – develop strong relationships with senior stakeholders across the business and across functions to ensure that strategic direction is aligned, tapping into your existing network when needed.

· People Development – manage the Property team of 100+ professionals to ensure that no team is working beyond their capacity or acting outside of their capability, and all have access to training and development.

· Policy, Process, and Improvement – work to identify, mitigate and reduce all property-related risk to the Bank, adhering to Bank policy and governance, driving a culture of compliance throughout the team.

· Thought Leadership – weaving diversity, equity, and inclusion through day-to-day actions, looking to the future of the estate, with a focus on Greening Government sustainability strategy, preserving culture and best practice within the Bank’s complex and historic property portfolio.

Number of direct reports: 2

Role Requirements

Essential Criteria

• Strong working background within a multi-site estate, preferably with a complex historic estate, with a history of managing a sizeable team alongside a number of potentially conflicting priorities.
• Exemplary customer service delivery, demonstrating a constant drive for excellence in all aspects of property service, as measured through user feedback, improvements, and financially sound decisions.
• Member of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors and relevant real estate undergraduate degree or equivalent applicable qualification.

Minimum Criteria

• A proven track record of managing a complex property supply chain including various forms of contract and handling challenging commercial relationships and driving performance and value for money.
• Significant experience across all service lines within a real estate function, with a track record in delivering complex projects, developing, and delivering the strategic direction for the Property function. This might include conducting or interpreting a feasibility analysis to make the right decision on developing a new site.
• Significant experience in the delivery and management of physical asset maintenance and operations, hard engineering, fabric maintenance, workplace build, and estates management.
• Property professional expertise across Facilities Management and Estates Management, and across all Government Property Career Framework technical skills and job families, sufficient to own all service delivery for the property function and to identify and appropriately manage risk across the whole of a property function.
• Demonstrable understanding of strategy and business planning to include current and future capability and capacity requirements to deliver on the Bank’s priorities around topics such as Levelling Up and Net Zero.
• Expertise in health & safety, compliance and inclusion providing robust professional advice to protect the Bank from any property related legal, financial, or Health & Safety risk.

Desirable Criteria

• Post graduate qualification or equivalent in Property Management/Facilities management or applicable degree.

You should not be put off from applying if you do not meet or do not have all of these criteria – we would actively encourage you to get in touch to discuss what support you might need to close any gaps and/or any other skills you might have which you think could be effective in this role.

Our Approach to Inclusion

The Bank values diversity, equity and inclusion. We play a key role in maintaining monetary and financial stability, and to do that effectively, we believe we need a workforce that reflects the society we serve.

At the Bank of England we want all colleagues to feel valued and respected, so we're working hard to build an inclusive culture which supports people from all backgrounds and communities to be at their best at work. We celebrate all forms of diversity, including (but not limited to) age, disability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, race, religion, sexual orientation and socioeconomic status. We believe that it’s by drawing on different perspectives and experiences that we’ll continue to make the best decisions for the public.

We welcome applications from individuals who work flexibly, including job shares and part time working patterns. We've also partnered with external organisations to support us in making adjustments for candidates and employees in the recruitment process where they're needed.

For most roles where work can be carried out at home, we aim for colleagues to spend half of their time in the office, with a minimum of 40% per month. Subject to that minimum requirement, individuals and managers should work together to find what works best for them, their team and stakeholders.

This can be based from either our Threadneedle St office in London or our Leeds office in the city centre.

Finally, we're proud to be a member of the Disability Confident Scheme. If you wish to apply under this scheme, you should check the box in the ‘Candidate Personal Information’ under the ‘Disability Confident Scheme’ section of the application.

Salary and Benefits Information

This specific role offers a competitive base salary. We encourage flexible working, part time working and job share arrangements. Part time salary and benefits will be on a pro-rated basis as appropriate.

In addition, we also offer a comprehensive benefits package as detailed below:

• A non-contributory, career average pension giving you a guaranteed retirement benefit of 1/95th of your annual salary for every year worked. There is the option to increase your pension (to 1/50th) or decrease (to 1/120th) in exchange for salary through our flexible benefits programme each year.
• A discretionary performance award based on a current award pool.
• An 8% benefits allowance with the option to take as salary or purchase a wide range of flexible benefits.
• 26 days’ annual leave with option to buy up to 12 additional days through flexible benefits.
• Private medical insurance and income protection.

National Security Vetting Process

Employment in this role will be subject to the National Security Vetting clearance process (and typically can take between 6 to 12 weeks post offer) and the passing of additional Bank security checks in accordance with the Bank policy. Further information regarding the vetting and security clearance requirements for the role will be provided to the successful applicant, and information about how the Bank processes personal data for these purposes, is set out in the Bank's Privacy Notice

The Application Process

Important: Please ensure that you complete the ‘work history’ section and answer ALL the application questions fully. All candidate applications are anonymised to ensure that our hiring managers will not be able to see your personal information, including your CV, when reviewing your application details at the screening stage. It’s therefore really important that you fill out the work history and application form questions, as your answers will form a critical part of the initial selection process.

The closing date for applications is Sunday 7th April

Please apply online, ensuring that you complete your work history and answer ALL the application questions fully and in detail as your application will not be considered if all mandatory questions are not fully completed.