Senior Commissioning Officer
| Posting date: | 14 July 2025 |
|---|---|
| Hours: | Full time |
| Closing date: | 13 August 2025 |
| Location: | Leicester, le3 8rf |
| Company: | Leicestershire County Council |
| Job type: | Permanent |
| Job reference: | 5686 |
Summary
Children and Families Department
Organisation: Leicestershire County Council
Work Location: County Hall, Glenfield, Leicester LE3 8RF/Home
Worker Category: Hybrid Worker (Office based at least once a week)
Salary: £42,498 - £46,344 per annum
Working Hours: 37 Hours
Contract Type: Permanent
Closing Date: 23rd July 2025
Interview Date(s): TBC
Job Opportunity: Senior Commissioning Officer – CFS Commissioning Service
The Children and Family Services Commissioning Service is expanding. As result, we have an exciting opportunity for a new Senior Commissioning Officer.
If you are committed to the delivery of high-quality support for children and young people and are interested in leading commissioning staff to deliver effective services from the children’s social care and education market – then this job could be right for you!
The role of commissioning is to understand the population, their resources, needs, and aspirations, now and in the future; to plan with local people, and our organisational partners, to make the most effective use of local resources and develop solutions to meet needs and aspirations, and to deliver these solutions.
The drivers for the service include providing children and families with the ‘right services at the right time’ in line with strategic objectives, whilst ensuring that the Leicestershire pound is maximised.
About the Role
This new Senior Commissioning Officer post will work primarily within a new team within the CFS Commissioning Service dedicated to commissioning for the department’s Education, Inclusion and Additional Needs directorate. The post will be responsible for supporting a Commissioning Manager and managing Commissioning Officers, driving a range of priorities and objectives as outlined further within the advert.
Initially the focus of this role will largely be to help support the implementation of this new team, working closely with operational (including social care and health), commissioning, finance and business support colleagues to ensure an effective commissioning offer for children and young people with educational needs, including inclusion and Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND).
Functions within the team that you will directly line manage may include brokerage, quality assurance, contract management and review, as well as market shaping activities and advising on and supporting procurement activities.
This post will be expected to have good grip on performance and help the service deliver against a range of departmental strategic objectives, including addressing sufficiency challenges as well as working on efficiency and savings targets.
A DBS enhanced check for a regulated activity is required for this post.
For information on our approach to the recruitment of ex-offenders, please see our policy statement.
About You
To apply for this post, you must respond to and evidence the following essential criteria within your personal statement. This should be no more than 1,000 words.
- Experience of using monitoring and evaluation to inform planning, including data systems to track performance.
- Experience of managing and motivating staff, to include a focus on equality, diversion and inclusion in the workforce.
- Excellent analytical skills and ability to produce written reports as required – this will often include using a variety of data to understand need and demand for services, gathering feedback from children and young people and their parents and carers (Voice work), and engagement with partners and providers
- Experience of business process design, process testing, and the documentation of work instructions.
- An ability to work with a range of operational staff, external providers and strategic partners (such as other Local Authorities, health, Education, Social Care and parent/carers)
- Excellent communication skills, be able to follow processes, develop best practice and work to support continuous improvement within the team and the Children and Families department
- Knowledge of relevant national legislation and regulation requirements relevant to working within the local authority and the Children and Family Services
You must also have an understanding of, and commitment to, equality, diversity and inclusion.
In addition, we also expect you to share our commitment to our values and will ask you to evidence when you have demonstrated them as part of the selection process.
Reasonable adjustments will be considered for applicants with a disability.
Interested in Flexible Working?
We are keen to support employees to balance their working life with other commitments. Therefore, wherever possible, we will consider working arrangements that suit an individual's personal circumstances whilst still meeting the needs of the Council. If you would like to discuss the possible flexible working options that might be applicable to this role, please contact the person named below. This may include requests for term-time working, part-time hours, compressed hours, flexible start and finish times, home/remote working, etc.
Every role within the Council has a defined working style which determines where they can work. The worker category applicable to this post is detailed in the above advert. You can find out more about our worker categories in the Our Working Styles page on our career site.
For more information or an informal discussion, please contact:
Enter name and job title: Sarah Wilson – Service Manager
Telephone: 0116 305 6527
Email: Sarah.Wilson@leics.gov.uk
How to Apply
Leicestershire County Council is an inclusive organisation which is on a journey to embed and celebrate equality, diversity and inclusion at every level. We warmly welcome and encourage applications from people of all backgrounds, as having a diverse workforce with different perspectives and ideas is fundamental to our values and enriches the services we offer our communities. We particularly welcome applicants from Ethnically Diverse and LGBTQ+ communities and people with disabilities to create a balanced workforce and one that reflects the communities we serve. Applicants with a disability who meet the criteria listed in the 'About You' section above will be offered an interview under the Disability Confident Employer Scheme.
To apply for this job, please click on the apply button. You will need to upload a supporting statement as part of your application which explains how you meet the criteria listed in the 'About You' section above. For more information, see the How to Apply section on our career site.
We reserve the right to close this vacancy early if we receive sufficient applications for the role. Therefore, if you are interested, please submit your application as early as possible.
If you have any technical issues when trying to apply for this post or you want to request an application pack in an alternative format, please contact our Employee Service Centre by telephoning 0300 3030222 (select option 2) or raising a ticket via our online portal: https://emss.org.uk/support.
By applying for this post, you agree to our Terms and Conditions.
Proud member of the Disability Confident employer scheme