The Steel and Aluminium Sectors Team sits within the Materials Directorate within the DBT Business Group. We lead HMG’s efforts to build a strong and sustainable steel sector in the UK, determining how best to leverage up to £2.5bn of funding, and developing a steel strategy to be delivered in the spring, setting out how we will work to achieve this objective. Simultaneously, our work also focuses on helping the UK’s existing steel industry adapt and decarbonise in the context of challenging market conditions, whilst balancing competing objectives such as trade, competition and supply chain security. Our work creates opportunities to engage across a broad scope, from local communities, stakeholders across Whitehall and with businesses nationally and internationally.
We support the steel and aluminium sectors through encouraging existing companies and new entrants to manufacture within the UK, supporting critical industries across a range of sectors including construction, infrastructure, automotive and aerospace.
The work of the team is extremely high-profile, politically critical, and of real interest to Parliament and the media, so you can expect direct contact with Ministers, as well as opportunities for engagement with a range of stakeholders. It also impacts the many thousands of people in the UK who are employed both directly and indirectly through the activities of the sectors involved.
We work closely with other Government departments including No.10, Cabinet Office, HMT, DESNZ, MHCLG, MoD, DSIT and others, including the devolved administrations, UKGI and the Insolvency Service. The roles also include extensive external engagement with businesses, trade bodies and trade unions. Our team benefits from an excellent reputation.
We are seeking up to four individuals who can deal with complex and interesting policy questions, manage a diverse range of stakeholders, and have a focus on delivery. We are a friendly team and there is a real ethos of pitching in and working together.
The roles are:
Business policy and relationship management (1 role)
* Leading on relationships with specific steel manufacturing companies in the sector, being responsible for HMG’s negotiations with them as needed. This entails building strong relationships, a deep understanding of the relevant companies and their likely strategies, driving and securing agreement for a cross-Government response, and leading an agile fast-paced response to any developments.
* Planning & responding to potential major shocks with specific companies as required.
* Working with UKGI, HMT and others to ensure the right expertise is brought to bear on the relationships, any negotiations or any shock or special situation
Trade and international (1 role)
* Working with colleagues across government and internationally to ensure the sector can trade on a fair and competitive basis. Global steel markets are lucrative, but heavily distorted from unfair practices and subsidies. This role will include developing policy for and influencing DBT’s steel and trade strategies, our FTA programme and our work to design and agree what comes after the UK Steel Safeguard, a measure which provides critical protection to the UK sector and must end in 2026.
* Managing the UK’s engagement at two major international fora, the Global Forum of Steel Excess (GFSEC) Capacity and the OECD Steel Committee, requiring occasional travel to Paris. Line management of one SEO.
Funding and investment (2 roles)
* Leading on the manifesto commitment to invest up to £2.5bn in the steel sector, which will be delivered through the National Wealth Fund and other routes. This requires both a ‘big picture’ understanding of the sector and its challenges, including current barriers to investment, and a sharp focus on delivery with the ability to take work forward at pace on funding options. One of the roles will have line management responsibility of one SEO.
All the roles will involve working collaboratively across teams - for example, working with teams in other Government departments leading on industrial decarbonisation, central grants and loans, local contingency planning etc.
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