About Us:

Our support services help the whole council work to the best of their ability. They include the Council's Customer Access department, Human Resources, IT, Financial Management, Corporate Property, Audit, Fraud, Risk and Insurance.

We aim for excellence in these services as they will in turn benefit the community we serve. Please take a look at our current vacancies.

The Role:

Overview and Scrutiny has the power to look at anything that affects the borough and its local people.  This role provides an opportunity to support the Council’s scrutiny councillors as they hold decision makers to account, identify service improvements and develop policy by investigating issues of local concern.

You will be responsible for managing and co-ordinating the annual work programme for 2 Select Committees.  This includes:

• Planning reviews;
• Carrying out research and collecting evidence;
• Drafting reports and briefing papers;
• Advising on policy options, and 
• Providing high quality professional advice to councillors and officers on a range of policy and constitutional matters.  

For further information please refer to the Job Description.

About You:

We are looking for someone who is interested in local democracy and community leadership.  

In this role you will:

• Work with the Chair and Vice Chair to manage the annual work programme;  
• Provide support for scrutiny members including providing advice on scrutiny in line with statutory guidance and best practice, and producing briefing papers, background materials, key lines of enquiry, arranging seminars etc.;  
• Carry out and commission qualitative and quantitative research to support topics including data gathering and analysis, case studies and examples of good practice to inform the scrutiny process;  
• Source external experts to contribute information to agenda items at formal meetings and to working groups;  
• Support working groups, including: managing the project plan; drafting terms of reference; providing advice on virtual and remote techniques to gather evidence and engage with stakeholders, and drafting reports in consultation with the chair; and
• Promote scrutiny across the Council and externally including production of reports and publicity to show what has changed as a result.    

Flexible working is encouraged and the role will involve attendance at some evening meetings.

Role Requirements:

• To proactively support scrutiny at the Council, taking lead responsibility for specific areas of the scrutiny function to ensure an effective and efficient scrutiny service. 
• To advise and support Committee Chairs to identify and prioritise their ambitions for Scrutiny and help to devise the most effective means of delivering them.   
• To provide advice to scrutiny members using legislative, policy and research expertise. This will involve analysing information as well as providing advice and interpretation to members. 
• To support the development of the scrutiny work programme. This will involve informal engagement and arranging consultation with key stakeholders, and developing ideas for scrutiny projects into realistic, scoped out proposals. 
• To deliver scrutiny reviews that are well-evidenced, objective and impartial. This involves project management, identifying and engaging key contributors and evidence and producing well-written reports with outcome focused recommendations.

We work in partnership with Hampshire County Council (HCC) who deliver many transactional services on our behalf. Although most communications will be from HCC, all selection and appointment decisions will be made by RBKC. Certain services are shared across more than one Council area to nearby neighbouring Authorities. This enhances delivery and reduces costs. Your recruitment information will advise if your remit extends beyond RBKC.

We will primarily contact candidates by e-mail throughout the recruitment process, please monitor your email junk / spam folder as our system generated emails may be allocated to these folders by your email settings.

We engage our staff with a variety of learning types including face-to-face and virtual learning because we want to ensure our staff understand our values and behaviours, grow their skills and develop their careers.

Additional information

RBKC is currently inclusively reviewing its pay, reward and benefits framework.

This post is covered by the Fluency Duty, as outlined in the Code of Practice on the English language requirements for public sector workers.

We are committed to promoting equality and respecting diversity and welcome applications from all sections of the community.

We are a Disability Confident Employer – committed to ensuring that our recruitment and selection process is inclusive and accessible.