Health & Safety Manager

Job Description
Job Purpose:
Act as the Competent Person on behalf of the Council and lead professional on all health and Safety matters, including setting the strategic
direction and related objectives for Health and Safety for the Council, providing leadership to the team and positively influence and embed the Health and Safety
agenda across the Council. Ensuring legal compliance with all Health and Safety related legislation and codes of practice. Ensure the provision of a proactive
Health and Safety Advisory Service to the Council, ensuring effective management systems, audit and inspection mechanisms are in place to achieve Health and
Safety improvements and provide compliance assurance to the Council. The post has responsibility for:
• Corporate Health and Safety
• Developing and ensuring demonstrable adherence to the Health and Safety Policy
• Ensuring all Council Directorates have the processes and procedures in place to deliver health and safety compliant services
• Ensuring third party suppliers and joint venture companies delivering on behalf of the Council deliver services that are compliant with Health and Safety
legislation.
Resources
Staff Direct responsibility for a corporate team of Health and Safety professionals, with wider indirect responsibility for ensuring the health and
safety of all staff, Elected Members, Executive Directors, Directors and Heads of Service, including training requirements.
Finance Responsible for managing the service budget in excess of £500k within the allocated cash limits, the provision of timely forecasts and
projections for budgetary control purposes and for taking appropriate action if and when significant variances are identified.
Physical Responsible for developing, managing and maintaining Council wide Health and Safety related management systems to be used by all
Council services, to include the collection, maintenance and use of significant bodies of corporate data.
Clients Ensure services are delivered in a suitable and safe working environment for occupiers and users of Council buildings and service
provisions in accordance with statutory requirements and good practice
Duties and key result areas:
• Work with the Chief Executive and Executive Management Team to develop the strategic direction and related objectives for health and safety that will be
implemented across the Council. This strategic direction will support the delivery of the Corporate Plan, Service Plans, relevant legislation and best
practice from within and outside of the sector.
• Provide professional leadership to an efficient and effective service and positively influence and embed the Health and Safety agenda across the Council,
including traded entities and commercial partners.
• Take a leading role in partnership working with colleagues and stakeholders to ensure a consistent, professional and positive approach to the
management of health and safety, and promote and engender appropriate culture change and organisational development in relation to health and safety.
• Responsible for developing, continually reviewing and implementing the Council’s Health and Safety Policy.
• Ensure clear targets, benchmarks and objectives are set for the delivery of a proactive, sustained, measurable approach to health and safety
management in the Council.
• Ensure Council wide effective health and safety management and performance by reviewing and assessing health and safety auditing processes, making
recommendations where appropriate and advising and reporting on changes to practice as necessary.
• Lead on timely communications with staff at all levels of the organisation to promote improved health and safety management.• Prepare the annual health and safety report for presentation to Committee.
• Monitor and assess health and safety performance against the relevant performance indicators, including compliance with legislations and work with
Service Directors and Heads of Service to ensure key targets and objectives are met.
• Oversee and influence the organisational Health and Safety training needs to meet legislation and the delivery of the health and safety agenda.
• Present high quality, professional, concise and accurate health and safety information, statistics and business case reports to the Chief Executive,
Executive Management Team and Elected Members.
• Develop and manage effective joint working relationship with all relevant external agencies, including HSE, to maximise the Council's role, function and
influence in relation to all aspects of organisational Health and Safety.
• Actively promote, represent and advocate on behalf of the service and Council at local, regional and national level as appropriate.
Principle Areas of Responsibility:
• Ensure the Council is demonstrably compliant with the relevant Health & Safety legislation, including the identification of areas/issues that require improvement
and recommend and develop strategic projects to minimise the moral, legal and financial risk to the Council and external stakeholders
• Deputise for the Service Director in relation to the health and safety agenda as required.
• Responsible for the leadership of the Corporate Health and Safety service.
• Promote managerial responsibility for cross-organisational team working, and across boundaries with other agencies and partners, to improve services and
solve problems in a coherent and integrated manner.
• Ensure that relevant and best professional advice, guidance and information is available in an intelligible and timely fashion to the Cabinet, Scrutiny, all
elected Members, as well as to other stakeholders.
• Sustain and improve the overall reputation of the Council and act in the best interests of Northumberland through effective representation locally, regionally
and/or nationally
• Ensure clear strategic direction with coherence between functions and responsibilities, established through service and organisational plans and within the
resources allocated with the aim of achieving business objectives, enabling transformation and delivering performance improvements across the Council's
Health and Safety service
• Support the Service Director to ensure that the Council's statutory obligations relating to Health and Safety are met.
• Support the Chief Executive in their role of holding overall responsibility for Health and Safety, the Director of Law and Corporate Governance who
holds delegated responsibility and the Health and Safety Lead Member.
• Understand and uphold the Council Constitution, Scheme of Financial Delegation and Contract Procedure Rules of the Council and ensure that
they are followed throughout the Corporate Health and Safety Service.
• Support the democratic process, providing advice to elected members on the appropriate response to local and regional matters in relation to
Health and Safety, as well as the internal business of the Council.
• Champion effective management of risk and the active response to audit findings in relation to service delivery. Be jointly accountable with others
in the Directorate for the local risk register and any aspects of the corporate risk register and corporate risk framework of the Council relevant to
services areas that the postholder is accountable for.
• Promote, preserve and protect the health and safety of councillors, employees, service users, contractors and partners in the provision of Council
services, ensuring that the provisions of all relevant legislation are achieved, such as the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.
Leadership and Collaboration• Demonstrates compassionate and inclusive leadership through the line management of services for whom the post is accountable and provides strong and
motivational leadership to drive continuous improvement, efficiency savings and higher levels of satisfaction for residents.
• Demonstrates strong contract and performance management skills in managing third party suppliers.
• Actively understand the challenges faced by colleagues across the organisation to be able to support the delivery of corporate objectives
• Actively promote and role model the council's priorities and ways of working, values and behaviours to ensure they are delivered throughout the service.
• Develop and implement effective communication and engagement arrangements with all stakeholders to facilitate effective relationships that drive
improvements in service delivery
Innovation
• Champion innovation by being open minded to new and radical ways to deliver services, actively seeking out good practice from others to learn from to
develop our own service design and delivery.
• Promote a culture of continuous improvement by encouraging colleagues to share ideas, take appropriate risks, and recognising innovation.
• Champion and embed a performance and quality assurance culture that delivers results through rigorous open challenge, personal accountability and
continuous improvement.
Finance
• Continually review and reshape service delivery to achieve financial efficiencies and maximise opportunities for income generation, whilst maintaining the
highest standards of service delivery
• Ensure the effective management and deployment of all appropriate budgets in line with agreed financial processes, envelopes and savings, including
contract budgets for people services and pooled budgets where appropriate
Key Relationships
• Director of Law and Corporate Governance (Service Director)
o Monthly 1:1 meetings
o Service management team meetings
o Annual appraisal and six month review
o Regular contact and ad hoc meetings as required, both in person and virtual
• Health and Safety Team Leaders (Direct reports)
o Monthly 1:1 meetings
o Monthly Team meeting
o Annual appraisal and six month review
o Regular contact and ad hoc meetings as required, both in person and virtual
• Other contacts
o Elected Members, may include out of normal working hours in crisis situations

Requirements
healthand safety

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