Project Manager

The Opportunity

Salary: £55,057 to £58,829 per annum

Working Pattern: Full time, 37 hours per week

Contract type: 1-year Fixed term or Secondment opportunity

Location: County Hall, Chichester and working from home (Hybrid approach)

Interview date: Wednesday 10 and Thursday 11 December 2025

West Sussex Fire and Rescue Service continues to deliver on its improvement journey, addressing performance, culture and financial challenges. With devolution, it also faces a new challenge of transitioning from being integrated within the County Council to a fire authority under a Mayoral Combined County Authority in 2027. As a Project Manager, your role will be pivotal to ensuring the on-going health and delivery of projects against its strategic Community Risk Management Plan, including change projects to support its disaggregation.

Reporting to the Change Programme Lead, you will be assigned to projects depending on need. You will be responsible for the on-going co-ordination, and delivery of a range of operational and strategic projects across the Service. This will include day to day responsibility for all aspects of the projects, ensuring they are delivered on time, to cost and to a good standard. Key to this is the effective management of project definition, scoping, risks and issues to ensure successful deliver and evidence measurable impact.

You will need to be able to demonstrate a clear understanding of how robust project management can support continuous improvement and change using a variety of techniques.

What are we looking for?

We are seeking an experienced project manager able to deliver projects covering a wide variety of subject areas, above all you will:

• Be required to manage a number of project teams in a matrix management environment, ensuring that change and project management processes are compliant with governance.
• Have experience of engaging with varied stakeholders at all levels to ensure wider business needs are supported and change is successfully implemented.
• Have experience in managing a range of projects, across cultural and technical change, meeting strategic goals, using creative problem solving and driving delivery.

For more information on the Key Skills as well as the Qualifications and/or experience required, please refer to the Job Description attached.

Working for us

As well as adding real value to our service users and our communities, as an employer we recognise our employees are central in being able to achieve this. To recognise this we want to help support your development and provide a great place to work ensuring you can fulfil your full potential, have access to a range of benefits including:

• an excellent local government pension scheme
• generous holiday entitlement of 30 days (plus opportunity to buy additional leave)
• a range of flexible working options, depending on your job role
• maternity, paternity, dependency and adoption leave
• volunteering opportunities
• training and development opportunities, including coaching and mentoring
• a range of discounts giving our staff access to hundreds of offers; groceries, travel, cinema tickets, days out, leisure activities, high street retailers and the opportunity to save over £1,000 a year through our West Sussex Choices benefits platform (see our Staff discounts page if you are a business looking to offer a discount)
• health and wellbeing benefits including access to our Employee Assistance Programme, Mental Health First Aiders and Voluntary Health Cash Plans

For a full list this can be found at our Rewards and Benefits page.

Further information

The reference number for this role is CPP01242.

For an informal conversation or for further information regarding the role, please contact Julie Robinson (Change Programme Lead) at For issues or queries regarding your application please contact

Internal candidates wishing to apply for this role will be considered for a secondment position. Please can you therefore discuss and agree this with your manager before applying for this position.

To apply, please follow the links below to upload your CV and Cover Letter. In your cover letter please outline your motivations for applying and explaining the skills and experience you can bring to the role (please refer to the key skills) ensuring that any gaps in employment are covered in your CV. Please ensure you have saved the job description attached to the main advert on our website as, once the job has closed, you may not have the opportunity to download again.

We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults. This post is subject to a standard DBS check, 3 years referencing, and a health check.

Equity, inclusion and accessibility is very important to West Sussex County Council. We welcome and encourage applications from everyone, as this helps us build a diverse and talented workforce, that reflects the communities we serve. We ensure our approach to recruitment is flexible and supportive to enable all applicants to be at their best and to ensure they have the best possible chance of success.

We operate a guaranteed interview scheme for applicants that have a disability, are a veteran or are a care leaver. More information can be found on our application helppage.

CC

Job Reference: CPP01242