HM Revenue and Customs is seeking 142 apprentices to join its Surge and Rapid Response Team (SRRT).
HMRC will pay a salary of £25,082, plus an employer pension contribution of £7,266, to the successful applicants for the surge and rapid response administrative officer role.
The SRRT, which was established in 2015, helps government departments to manage unexpected crises and during predictable peaks in demand for services.
The team is seeking “flexible frontline operational staff to carry out various roles civil service- wide”, the job advert says.
The advert says the job location can be Cardiff, Edinburgh, Leeds, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, or Washington, and adds that prospective candidates should be aware of a need for flexibility and travelling before they apply.
Given the nature of SRRT work, officials may need to change deployment at short notice, and this may involve working away from their home location anywhere in the UK and potentially abroad.
The advert says the team is looking for candidates who are “great with people, enthusiastic and a team player”.
The officers will need to “provide great customer service and work in a changing environment, managing priorities where required”, and must have “excellent communication skills, with the ability to work with minimum supervision within a dynamic environment”.
The AOs won’t need previous experience as HMRC will provide full training.
Recruits will enrol onto a 16-month Level 3 apprenticeship programme and be expected to stay in post until this is completed. They will need hold a GCSE Grade 4 (formerly C) or equivalent in English and Maths, or will need to complete a Functional Skills Level 2 qualification in both subjects as part of the apprenticeship.
In an interview with CSW in March, then-civil service chief operating officer Alex Chisholm said the SRRT – which has more 1,000 officials – “shows the best of the civil service”.
He said: “When the ambulance service came under huge pressure, those teams stepped in to do triage to relieve that pressure; when there was a large number of people coming out of Ukraine and trying to get visas in the UK following the invasion by Russia, again, Surge teams leapt into action – 200 people supported the processing of those visas. And they did the same for the EU settlement scheme – 97 members of the SRRT were put into action and they closed 263,000 cases.”
Chisholm said this “shows how civil servants rise to the challenge but it also shows the flexibility that we’ve got to flow resource where it’s needed. They actually have contracts which enable them to be deployed in different contexts, and that’s the shape of the future.
“When people picture a civil servant, they might think about somebody in an office, sitting behind a computer, but a huge number of civil servants are frontline-focused, really helping with major public delivery issues. Any member of the public thinking, ‘Do I admire the civil service, would I consider working there myself?’ should think about those people and their lionhearted efforts to help the public in times of need.”
The government has, however, come in for criticism for using SRRT officers to cover striking civil servants' work.
HMRC is hosting a virtual recruitment event for those interested in the job. This will take place on Monday, 28 October 2024 at 2:30pm.