Opportunities

Post: Project Manager – Civility & Respect Working Group
Salary: £25,237 plus benefits (£41,496 FTE pro rata)
Contract type: 6 months fixed term contract
Location: Mainly home working with occasional requirement to attend face to face meetings and conferences
Hours: 22.5 hours per week

About us
The National Association of Local Councils (NALC), the County Associations of Local Councils and One Voice Wales (OVW), as the membership organisations representing the first tier of local government in England and Wales, and the Society of Local Council Clerks (SLCC) as the professional body representing town, parish and community council clerks and chief officers, are committed to working together to promote civility and respect in public life, good governance, positive debate and supporting the well-being of councillors, professional officers and staff.

Our organisations have jointly formed the ‘Civility & Respect Project Working Group’ which has for the last eighteen months been working to deliver improvement through tangible resources, actions and interventions in four main areas:
• providing councils with the tools to support good governance
• lobbying to strengthen the standards regime and encourage more people to get involved
• training and development
• processes to intervene to provide support to struggling councils.

Its mission is set out in the following joint statement:
“Civility and respect should be at the heart of public life and good governance is fundamental to ensuring an effective and well-functioning democracy at all levels.
The intimidation, abuse, bullying and harassment of councillors, professional officers and staff, in person or online, is totally unacceptable; whether that is by councillors, professional officers, staff or members of the public.

This can prevent councils from functioning effectively, councillors from representing local people, discourage people from getting involved including standing for election, and undermine public confidence and trust in local democracy.

The National Association of Local Councils (NALC), county associations of local councils and One Voice Wales (OVW), as the membership organisations representing the first tier of local government in England and Wales, and the Society of Local Council Clerks (SLCC) as the professional body for clerks, are committed to working together to promote civility and respect in public life, good governance, positive debate and supporting the well-being of councillors, professional officers and staff.

To that end the Group will be working to deliver tangible resources, actions and interventions in four main areas: providing councils with the tools to support good governance; lobbying to strengthen the standards regime and encourage more people to get involved; training; and processes to intervene to provide support to struggling councils.”

About the job
The purpose of the role is to ensure continuation of the project, will include working with the current project workstreams and the Project Assurance Board to identify and manage phase 2 of the project, delivering to time and budget, whilst establishing a plan with staff at NALC and SLCC to bring the project into business as usual. You will be accountable to the Working Group in playing a key role in supporting their decision making, taking direction and providing regular reports and updates on the progress of various work packages.

The role will require a blend of strong communications skills, excellent stakeholder management skills and outstanding organisational and time management skills. The ability to plan and deliver discrete work packages as part of a larger scale, co-ordinated project will be essential as will the ability to manage suppliers and third party service providers – ensuring the work meets quality standards and is delivered to time and budget.

The role will be employed by NALC and line managed by the Chief Executive, but answerable to the Project Assurance Board itself.

Deadlines for applications is midnight on Sunday 19 March, with interviews planned for w/c 20 March.

To see the Job Description and Person Specification, please click here.

To apply for the post, please click here.