Cabinet Officer
About Newham
The Council is led by directly elected Labour Mayor, Rokhsana Fiaz OBE, who is driving a bold transformative agenda to improve the lives of working people with an ambitious housing and community wealth building plans detailed in Towards a Better Newham. Newham is a vibrant inner-city borough with one of the youngest and most diverse populations in the country.
Although the council is making good progress, there is more to do to ensure the Mayor’s ambitious plans are delivered, especially on climate change, social housing and children and young people. Above all the Mayor is committed to ‘putting people at the heart of everything we do’, which means changing the way the council engages with our residents.
About the Job
Working in the Mayor’s office team, your role is central to ensuring the delivery of the policy agenda closely with Cabinet members and senior officers of Council.
You will ensure the effective operation of the Council’s Cabinet Governance arrangements, including the provision of a robust and efficient support service to the Executive Members of Newham Council.
Key responsibilities include,
- Ensuring smooth running of the Cabinet briefing processes including from Cabinet member and corporate director meetings, coordinating with officers the timetabling of cabinet briefings for member review and managing the agenda for Cabinet briefings.
- Co-ordinate with democratic services and policy officers’ responses by Cabinet members responses to elected member scrutiny.
- Tracking key policy deliverables in Cabinet forward plan and managing process of Cabinet agreeing change to report timetabling
Liaising with senior figures of the council, the Cabinet Officer builds strong relationships with key stakeholders in addition to partnership bodies, ensuring effective and transparent lines of communication.
About you
You will want to put your experience of working in a political, government or policy environment to help support the delivery of an ambitious policy agenda. Displaying experience of working within a public sector environment, you will have gained exposure collaborating with senior leaders, at an elected and officer, communicating effectively amongst a wide range of stakeholders. You will have a good knowledge about how Council’s make decisions and the challenges they face in making them.
It is essential that you have a proactive attitude, with the ability to work on your own initiative. Working in a busy team will mean you must prioritise and manage workloads efficiently and effectively.
In addition to meeting the criteria outlined in the attached Job Description, you will also be required to detail examples of your experience/ knowledge of the following areas within your application:
- Excellent interpersonal skills, with the ability to demonstrate tact and diplomacy
- Ability to apply a logical and practical approach to problem-solving
- Ability to communicate clearly and effectively both orally and written
- Strong organisation and prioritisation skills, managing a varied workload, working towards tight deadlines
For more information on the application criteria, please click here to view the Job Description and Person Specification.
Please attach your supporting statement, explaining in no more than x2 A4 sides why and how you meet the criteria for this role.