Policy Manager

This job is brought to you by Jobs/Redefined, the UK's leading over-50s age inclusive jobs board.

Job Description

• East Suffolk Council, East Suffolk House IP12 1RT/Riverside Office NR33 0EQ
• £47,754 - £51,802 per annum Band 9
• Policy Manager
• 37 hours per week

East Suffolk Council is an exciting place to work, delivering essential local services and making a real difference to a quarter of a million people across East Suffolk.

Want to work in an organisation where you can truly feel like you are making a difference to people's lives? We have an opportunity for you to join us as our Policy Manager - to lead our Policy, Performance and Risk team. We're looking for a dynamic and motivated individual with a keen interest in local government, to work as part of our corporate hub delivering to the needs of the whole authority, helping to drive, innovate and improve service delivery and customer satisfaction across the organisation. This role is a real opportunity to be at the heart of shaping good service delivery and being the link between local and national government policy changes, including the current LGR and Devolution landscape.

Your role:

As a key corporate service, you are enabling the organisation to function effectively, learn from insight and meet critical governance responsibilities. You will work and engage with a wide range of colleagues across the council and local partner agencies. You will be responsible for the direct line management of the Corporate Complaints Officer and Performance & Risk Officer, and their wider reports to form a cohesive team dedicated to improving performance and learning from past actions.

This post will have specific responsibility for:

• Taking a proactive lead on horizon scanning, gathering insight on the work of other authorities, emerging policy issues from all areas of the public sector, and feeding information and analysis into the organisation to inform our services and local policy creating a central resource to co-ordinate policy shaping across the organisation.
• Ensuring an effective delivery of the corporate complaints function.
• Delivering a proactive performance monitoring and reporting function.
• Overseeing corporate risk management activity.
• Leading customer satisfaction activities to ascertain our overall council performance.
• Managing a team providing other corporate functions and governance.

What you will need:

• An ability to understand a wider local government perspective to ensure policy is relevant and plans reflect our strategic priorities.
• A keen interest in what is happening at a central government level that may be relevant to our locality.
• A strong proven ability to scope, lead and implement initiatives with knowledge and experience of using insights from performance data and lessons learned to drive improvements.
• An understanding of the importance of using customer satisfaction and feedback to feed the knowledge of the organisation to build strong services.
• Experience of working in the public sector environment would be an advantage.
• The ability to independently plan and implement work which crosses service and organisational boundaries to ever changing deadlines.

A commitment to own development and to supporting training and development initiatives.

Mobile within district and flexible approach to working hours - there will be a requirement to travel and attend evening Councillor meetings.

If you think you have what it takes to be successful in this role, even if you don't meet all the essential requirements, please apply. We would appreciate the opportunity to consider your application.

Why work for us?

East Suffolk Council is a great place to work and there are lots of benefits our employees can access. To find out more about why we are so proud of East Suffolk Council, take a look at our video and hear why our employees think it is such a great place to work (YouTube).

Here are some of the main benefits:

• Generous leave entitlement (equivalent to 25 days a year, increasing to 31 days after 5 years' service, plus bank holidays)
• Local government pension scheme
• Flexible working arrangements
• Learning and development tailored to your role
• A wide variety of staff support networks including access to health and wellbeing initiatives and programmes.
• Discounts on mobile phones, computers, holiday and travel, fashion and clothing, health and beauty and many other products and services.

Find more information about what we offer in our benefits brochure (pdf).

These roles will primarily be remotely based, utilising local community assets, but will also involve travel across the district to provide face-to-face services as well as providing client support over the phone and via our digital platform. A full drivers' license and access to a car is essential for this role.

For more information

For an informal discussion regarding this post, please contact Sandra Lewis, Head of Digital, Programme Management and Customer Services at Sandra.Lewis@eastsuffolk.gov.uk

Closing date: 27 April 2025

Interview date: 8 May 2025

How to apply

Step 1 - Read the advert and the Job Description and Person Specification

Step 2 - Complete the Supporting Statement template (docx). Your statement needs to indicate how you meet each of the criteria contained within the Person Specification. Please use the template provided (other formats will not be accepted).

Step 3 - Complete the online application and upload your statement. Please note, CVs are not accepted.

For more information, check out the How to Apply section of our Career Site (URL).