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Civil Service Security Clearance Levels Explained

BPSS, CTC, SC and DV: which roles need what

You do not need clearance before you apply. It is obtained after a conditional offer, and the level required is stated in the advert:

• BPSS (Baseline Personnel Security Standard) - the minimum for essentially every role. Identity, right to work, criminal record and a three-year employment history. Typically 2–4 weeks.
• CTC (Counter Terrorist Check) - for roles with proximity to public figures or sensitive sites. Adds a Security Service check.
• SC (Security Check) - for long-term access to SECRET material. Includes a financial check and usually requires five years' UK residency. Commonly 6–12 weeks.
• DV (Developed Vetting) - the highest standard, for sustained access to TOP SECRET material. Involves a detailed interview and referee checks, normally requires ten years' UK residency, and can take several months.

Filter the board by Clearance if a long vetting timeline would be a problem, or if you already hold SC or DV and want roles that will accept a transfer.

How Civil Service Pay and Pension Work

Civil Service pay is set department by department within the annual Civil Service pay remit, so the same grade genuinely pays differently at different employers, and London roles carry a separate higher band. Most adverts publish an explicit minimum and maximum, which is what the Pay column and the salary filter sort on.

The pension is the part candidates most often undervalue. alpha is a career-average defined benefit scheme: you build 2.32% of each year's pensionable earnings as guaranteed, inflation-linked income for life, with an employer contribution far above a typical private-sector match. Our Civil Service pay and alpha pension calculator → works out take-home pay and the real value of that employer contribution for any grade and salary.

Contract type changes the picture too. Alongside permanent and fixed-term posts, the Civil Service advertises secondment and loan arrangements, which let you move in from another employer, or between departments, without giving up your existing terms.

Which Departments Are Hiring Right Now?

Recruitment volume is concentrated in the large operational departments. The Ministry of Justice and HM Prison & Probation Service run the highest-volume campaigns on the board, covering prison operational roles and probation officer returner programmes in particular. The Ministry of Defence hires steadily across engineering, commercial and security-cleared posts, while the UK Health Security Agency recruits specialist scientific and laboratory staff. Browse Civil Service jobs by department →

Use the Department filter for a specific organisation, or the Profession filter when the job family matters more than the employer, for example someone in DDaT usually wants every digital role in government, not to tick thirty departments one at a time. See every department currently advertising →

What Is a Mass Recruitment Campaign?

A mass recruitment campaign is a single Civil Service advert hiring for many identical posts at once, often across several regions, rather than for one named vacancy. One advert can be filling anywhere from five to fifty or more positions.

This matters more than almost anything else on your application strategy, and the official service does not surface it: two adverts sitting side by side look identical, but one is hiring 1 person and the other is hiring 40. Civil Jobs reads the post count out of each campaign and shows it in the Openings column, so you can sort the whole board by how many openings are genuinely available and spend your effort where your odds are best. Use the Min Openings filter to hide single-post adverts entirely.