Councillor and Governance Support Officer

**About Us**:
**THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM**

Innovation and Change in Westminster City Council is a world of extraordinary stories. Where people use their vision and commitment to enable Westminster residents to live well and thrive and Councillors are supported to make fully informed decisions for all. We do this in all kinds of ways, but always with a spirit of openness and a determination to deliver.

One of those decisions was the creation of our City Lions team who help young local people engage with culture, creativity and dreams. When they came across a lonely, isolated 16-year-old who called himself a failure, they knew what to do. They worked 1-2-1 to find the thing this boy really loved. YouTube, it turned out. But it’s impossible to turn that into a career, right? Wrong. A week later, he was enrolled on the British Film Institute film-making programme. It was the ultimate light-bulb moment. And it turned him into what he is today - a budding Spielberg with a world of opportunity at his feet.

That’s just one of our success stories. With your support to facilitate vital decisions at the Council, we’ll tell many more.

Please view the extraordinary story of the Impossible Dream **here**.

**The Role**:
As a Councillor and Governance Support Officer, you can make your own powerful contribution to delivering an excellent quality of life for Westminster’s community. You’ll be a key member of a skilled and determined team who provide elected officials with outstanding support and advice. Supporting decision makers to deliver for Westminster, we’re at the heart of all the Council does. We work on the Council’s response to all kinds of big challenges - and you’ll play an influential role.

Working proactively, you will manage Cabinet Members’ diaries, ensuring they are adequately briefed and have appropriate officer attendance. You will also work with Portfolio Advisors to collate and respond to casework, liaising with other departments and keeping records updated in a timely manner.

Please refer to the **Job Description** for more information.

**About You**:
You’ll bring to the role proven experience of coordinating and organising meetings and delivering support and advice to senior stakeholders. Highly collaborative and personable, you have a demonstrable flair for building good relationships across an organisation at every level. The ability to influence senior stakeholders and communicate in tactful, diplomatic ways is essential, keeping in mind the issues facing local government. You are comfortable working on high profile issues in a fast-paced environment, rapidly getting to grips with large and complex volumes of information, and balancing several workstreams simultaneously. Please note that this role requires you to be flexible in managing regular meetings into the evening.

**What We Offer**:
Westminster is an amazing place. We are home to more than 200,000 residents from all backgrounds, over 50,000 vibrant and vital businesses and three-quarters-of-a-million people work in Westminster. Westminster City Council’s strategy is to work towards a Fairer Westminster. A Fairer Westminster is one in which our communities are at the heart of our decision-making and help to determine the city’s future. By working directly with our communities and other partners, we can build a more inclusive city that celebrates our diverse communities, and where residents, workers and visitors from all backgrounds will feel welcome and safe.

As a forward-thinking Council we appreciate that people work in different ways, therefore our staff benefit from working a range of flexible working patterns as well as Agile working.