Commissioning Officer

**About Barnet Council**

Barnet is a borough with much to be proud of. Our excellent schools, vibrant town centres, vast green spaces, and diverse communities all help make it a wonderful place to live and work. As a council we want to build on these strengths as we move into the future. We are growing and developing as an organisation to meet the challenges facing our borough and we are committed to working with partner organisations and residents to make Barnet even better. As an organisation, our staff are committed to Our Values: Caring, Learning to Improve, Inclusive, Collaborate.

**About Directorate**

The aim of the Family Service is to ensure that all children and young people in Barnet achieve the best possible outcomes and to enable them to become successful adults, especially our most vulnerable children. They should be supported by high quality, integrated and inclusive services that identify additional support needs early, are accessible, responsive and affordable for the individual child and their family.

**About the role**
- Support the Commissioners to develop, implement and maintain robust commissioning, procurement and contract monitoring policies, procedures and frameworks, in line with corporate practices, and to ensure compliance with them.
- To produce high quality and timely information and data from contracts and services, to inform future business planning and commissioning activity.
- Actively manage the Family Services contracts register and other key documents, ensuring they are well maintained to provide reliable management information.
- Co-ordinate and support and/or lead regular monitoring and review meetings with providers, ensuring that commissioners and service managers are briefed and involved as appropriate.
- Analyse, track and report on the performance of Family Services contracts, using local and national data, performance and spend information, benchmarking against industry standards and national guidelines where appropriate.
- Ensure the proper financial management and performance of contracts, service level agreements and grants. Coordinate reporting on spend as required, working closely with finance colleagues.
- Provide recommendations for Commissioning based on contract reviews, performance, spend and insight information.

This is a role in the Family Services Commissioning Team, sitting in the Commissioning, Performance and Improvement Service, working closely with colleagues across the service to ensure that commissioned services have the needs of children and young people at their centre.

Support the strategic commissioning and planning of services, working closely with partners, especially health, to include the commissioning of services via S75 arrangements
Support the Senior Commissioner to develop, implement and maintain robust commissioning, procurement and contract monitoring policies, procedures and frameworks in line with corporate practices
Take responsibility for the end to end commissioning of services in line with financial strategies, working closely with services managers and specialising in particular areas of work as required
Work closely and collabouratively with legal services and service managers to ensure that both current and future needs of the children's service and service users are met to a consistently high standard
Work closely with wider council services and across Family Services to ensure business activities are appropriately joined up and support appropriate joint commissioning
About you
- Extensive knowledge, experience and understanding of delivering a high quality and valued Commissioning service.
- Ability to analyse complex information quickly, reaching and articulating decisions with clarity, to deliver solutions that command support.
- Ability to work effectively, flexibly and constructively with colleagues in a team where team members work positively to a shared goal, and the proven ability to develop and maintain effective professional working relationships and networks with stakeholders and use these relationships to improve the effectiveness of the service

**What we offer**
- 30 days annual leave, plus public and bank holidays
- Flexible Government pension options, with contributions of over 26%
- Work-life balance options may include hybrid working, flexitime, job share, home working, part-time
- A vast range of lifestyle discounts from major retailers, supermarkets, energy suppliers and more
- Broad range of payroll benefits including cycle to work, eye care vouchers, travel and gym membership
- Excellent training and development opportunities
- Employee well
- being training programs including confidential employee assistance

**How to apply**
- Barnet Council is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people, and vulnerable adults and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. Barnet operates stringent safer recruitment procedures._