Since March 2022 I have joined the central MoJ Innovation team as a team lead. The Ministry of Justice is determined to be one of the most forward-thinking departments in government, taking steps to experiment and use the latest tools and techniques to drive ever better service delivery.

My team is responsible for raising the profile of innovation within the Ministry of Justice, linking up ideas and teams across the department, and providing teams with guidance and support to help them think and work innovatively.

Given my background in research and evidence, my responsibilities focus on enabling better piloting and testing of new ideas, and better use of data and evidence in innovation.

Between July 2020 and March 2022 I was part of the MoJ Priority Projects team as a team lead. The Priority Projects Team is a high-profile, friendly and supportive team at the heart of the Ministry of Justice’s strategy function. We provide flexible resource to deliver priority policy projects, playing a central role in the development and delivery of the Ministry of Justice’s priorities.

So far in the team I have worked across 10 justice policy areas, covering topics such as legal aid, covid recovery, community justice, prisoner and prison officer policy, judicial policy, youth justice, alternative dispute resolution, drug and alcohol strategy, witness and victim attrition, and digital and technology.

Between 2018 and 2020 I acted as a senior policy advisor in MoJ judicial policy, leading on several workstrands supporting the Lord Chancellor’s responsibilities in relation to the judiciary.

I led on reviewing impacts of several government policies on the recruitment and retention of judiciary. I was also involved in the forecasting of judicial recruitment and deployment needs based on potential future levels of demand, across all courts and tribunals and all jurisdictions.

Back in 2018 I also led work on downstream impacts of EU Exit on the judiciary, judicial training preparation and preparedness of justice system to deal with impacts (from a judicial angle). This involved complex forecasting of potential EU Exit impacts across each court and tribunal jurisdiction, being aware of the current situation and challenges in each jurisdiction, and recommending ways in which the judiciary could be best deployed/recruited to prepare for future demand.