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London Borough Of Waltham Forest

About Us

The London Borough of Waltham Forest is fiercely ambitious. We want to make sure each and every one of our residents enjoys a good quality life. We have good schools, great parks, excellent culture facilities, mass regeneration and budding community entrepreneurship are making it a place that people want to call home. The borough also has fantastic transport links, being only 20 mins from the City and West End.

We are proud to be the first ‘London Borough of Culture’ for 2019 so it is a truly exciting time to join the borough!

Our Vision

Following consultation with residents, the council set three priorities which will provide the direction of travel for the next few years:

  • Keep Waltham Forest clean and safe
  • Ensure a decent roof over residents’ heads
  • Improve residents’ life chances.

Working for Us

We offer a fantastic range of benefits to our employees including

  • Flexible and agile working
  • Excellent annual leave entitlement and occupational sick pay entitlement
  • Attractive family friendly schemes, such as enhanced maternity and adoption leave. We were the first council in the country to offer Premature Baby Leave and Pay
  • Fabulous money saving staff benefits scheme
  • Childcare Vouchers salary sacrifice scheme
  • Cycle to Work salary sacrifice scheme
  • Car Salary sacrifice scheme
  • Car pool scheme for work use within the borough
  • Discounted gym membership
  • Local government pension scheme

The Council’s Recruitment and Selection Policy is available to view here.

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    Employment and right to work arrangements with effect from 1 January 2021

    We will be checking job applicants’ right to work in the same way as now until 30 June 2021.

    Until this date, job applicants can prove their right to work in the following ways:

  • - EU, EEA or Swiss citizens can use their passport or national identity card
  • - Non-EU, EEA or Swiss citizen family members can use an immigration status document listed in the right to work checks employer guide
  • - EU, EEA and Swiss citizens and their family members can use the online right to work checking service
  • If an applicant uses the online checking service this will generate a share code. The Council must then use the employers’ online service to check their right to work using this share code.

    We have a duty not to discriminate against EU, EEA or Swiss citizens. We cannot require them to show us their status under the EU Settlement Scheme until after 30 June 2021.

    Irish citizens will continue to prove their right to work in the UK as they do now.

    New immigration system from 1 January 2021 A new immigration system will apply to people arriving in the UK from 1 January 2021 and EU citizens moving to the UK to work will need to get a visa in advance.

    EU citizens applying for a skilled worker visa will need to show they have a job offer from an approved employer sponsor to be able to apply.

    The Council is an approved employer sponsor.

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The council is compliant with its duty under the Immigration Act 2016 to ensure that all public-facing post-holders can speak English fluently. This refers to the confidence and accuracy in the particular context of their job and does not relate to regional or international accents, dialects, speech impediments or the tone of conversations.

To support eligible job-seekers, our Adult Learning Service offers free ESOL courses. Have a look at their webpage for more information.

Supporting Parents and those returning to the workplace

The council recognises the importance of work life balance and offers a range of family friendly policies to foster a diverse and supported workforce so that we can attract applicants from all parts of the community.

We have several family friendly policies in place to support working parents within the workplace.

Our family friendly offer includes:

  • - 10 weeks occupational maternity pay and occupational adoption leave for employees with 26 weeks service (further weeks at statutory rate)
  • - 2 weeks full pay Paternity leave – known as Maternity Support Leave
  • - 5 weeks Shared Parental Leave at full pay (further weeks at the statutory rate)
  • - Premature Baby Leave and Pay up until babies due date for parents of babies born prematurely
  • - Full term hospitalised baby leave and pay for up to 4 weeks for parents of babies born full term but hospitalised due to illness

As well as the above entitlements parents can also make use of the following:

  • - Parental leave – this gives parents with one years’ service or more the opportunity to take 20 weeks unpaid leave per child, up until their child’s 18th birthday (capped at 4 weeks per year).
  • - The council’s career break scheme offers employees the chance to take two unpaid career breaks during their career in the council up to one year in length each.
  • - Buying annual leave scheme ( available to purchase during a specific timeframe) gives employees the opportunity to purchase additional leave days to be paid back via the salary in 12 equal instalments.
  • - To assist with childcare costs the council offers an interest free loan of up to £1500 to cover the costs of childcare, this is known as the Childcare Deposit Loan Scheme and repayments are taken automatically via the payroll.