Communications & Engagement Officer

**The Opportunity** Salary**: £31,586 to £34,314 per annum

**Location**: Your office base will be Chichester and a typical week will combine homeworking with attendance at the office. This is led by the needs of the service.

**Working hours**: Full time, 37 hours per week

**Contract type**: Fixed term or Secondment until 31/03/2026

**Employer Pension Contribution**: 19.70% this alters per annum on the 1 April each year.

**Annual leave**: 27 days holiday + Bank holidays = **35 days** (Full time equivalent)

As a Communications Officer, you will deliver first-class communications and messages to communities across West Sussex.

Working as part of the county council’s Communications & Engagement Team, you’ll be working on high-profile campaigns and messaging across various channels and platforms, including social, digital and print media as well as providing media relations and handling by liaising with journalists.

Working with a supportive team, you will be involved in multiple projects simultaneously where your passion for communications, innovation and creativity, plus your eye for detail and how best to convey a compelling message will be greatly valued.

You’ll be responsible for evaluating communications to showcase its impact. This will involve creating, managing, and monitoring plans, plus gathering quantifiable data through a variety of methods to track success.

You'll assist Senior Communication Officers and Communications Leads in promoting council campaigns, behavioural programmes, and projects efficiently. Understanding council services is crucial for recognising opportunities and building relationships with key staff. Training will be provided if this isn’t your current area of expertise. You will need to be aware of both local and national news agendas to ensure the county council is seizing all opportunities and responding to current events.

You’ll be required to participate in an out-of-hours on-call rota, for which an additional allowance is provided.
**What are we looking for?**
- Ability to develop creative ideas and editorial across all forms of communication and editing input for a range of platforms.
- Ability to write effectively for a range of audiences and communication channels including for the web and social media.
- Developed communication and interpersonal skills to effectively engage with clients and stakeholders, fostering strong working relationships.
- Problem-solving skills.
- Literacy and numeracy skills to understand and interpret research data and customer feedback and present analysis in the most appropriate way.
- Relevant theoretical and practical knowledge of processes, procedures and policies associated with working within a demanding communications service.
- Knowledge of communication methods, including social media, to effectively contribute to changing campaign objectives.
- Understanding of the media landscape and management of media sensitive issues.
- Understanding of the political landscape and politically sensitive issues.
- Experience of working on a variety of communications activities, particularly in a public sector environment.
- Experience/confidence of dealing with a range of people and services and planning on more than one campaign at a time.
- Experience of handling and responding to media enquiries.

**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 an great place to work ensuring you can fulfil your full potential, have access to a range of benefits including:

- 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 **CRS00946**.

CC

Job Reference: CRS00946