Senior Emergency Planning and Resilience Officer

Job Introduction

We have an exciting opportunity in the BCP Council Emergency Planning and Resilience Team for a full-time Senior Emergency Planning and Resilience Officer.   

We are seeking a proactive, motivated and enthusiastic resilience professional to work as integral members of a busy and supportive team.  

Role Purpose

The Emergency Planning and Resilience Team, on behalf of BCP Council, ensures there are plans in place for any emergency within the BCP Council area that could impact on its residents, communities and businesses or on the delivery of council services. The service makes sure that, if and when an emergency occurs, our response and recovery plans are ready to be put into action and any disruption is minimised. The team works collaboratively with many organisations who may be required to respond to an emergency.

Main Responsibilities

The role provides a varied and interesting workload.  You will be responsible for the development and maintenance of the council’s emergency planning and business continuity arrangements and the development and delivery of specific workstreams.    These range, for example, from community resilience, human aspects, loss of utilities, excess deaths, cyber and warning and informing.  The role will also entail delivering training and exercising and contributing to and leading on a range of Dorset Local Resilience Forum multi-agency capability groups, workstreams and emergency plans.  

You will be expected to deputise for and provide support to the Emergency Planning and Resilience Manager and the wider team on occasions.

You will also be a member of the Duty Emergency Planning 24/7 on-call rota responding to any emergencies or disruptive challenges that may arise.

This role involves working across all parts and levels of BCP Council and with partner agencies from across Dorset, regionally and nationally.

BCP Council offers hybrid working as standard.  There are options to work from home, from the Civic Centre in Bournemouth (main site) or other drop in sites in Poole and Christchurch.  It will, however, at times be required to work from other premises across the BCP Council area and across Dorset.  

The Ideal Candidate

You will be an experienced resilience professional with demonstrable knowledge and experience of emergency planning and business continuity (minimum 3 years) and have membership of a relevant professional body, e.g. the Emergency Planning Society, the Business Continuity Institute. You will have excellent communication and IT skills (knowledge of Microsoft Power BI, dashboards and other functionality extremely desirable), and be able to engage with individuals and groups across all levels of the organisation and with external partners.

Full details of the knowledge, skills and experience required are in the combined job description and person specification.

For an informal discussion about this post please email Alyson Whitley, Emergency Planning and Resilience Manager (alyson.whitley@bcpcouncil.gov.uk), to arrange a time to speak on the phone or via Microsoft Teams.

Provisional interview date 25th July 2024

Previous candidates need not apply.

About BCP Council:

BCP Council provides services to a diverse community of 400,000 residents and employs more than 5,000 people.  Our area includes over 15 miles of beautiful world-renowned coastline.  We can offer career defining roles to transform and improve services.  By working with us, you can help deliver a vision of a thriving, word-class, prosperous and inclusive place for generations to come.

Our Benefits:

We offer an excellent benefits package for further details see  here

As a result of the creation of BCP Council in 2019, we are working on simplifying our terms and conditions of service and will be creating a single pay structure which is to be applicable for all employees. It is important to us that we offer benefits that our colleagues value as part of their total employment package and we are reviewing these to make sure we have it right. We are in the process of establishing a timescale for implementation and colleagues joining us will be included in these changes. Expected to be in place 2024.