About the role
This is an exciting opportunity to help shape the future of Trading Standards in Cambridgeshire. We are looking for an experienced Trading Standards professional to play a key role in setting priorities, influencing service development and ensuring the service is well positioned to meet emerging risks and future challenges.
At Cambridgeshire Trading Standards, we protect residents, support legitimate businesses and help maintain a fair, safe and thriving local economy. Our work spans more than 100 pieces of legislation, including food standards, product safety, animal health, metrology and illicit trade, providing a varied and rewarding working environment where no two days are the same.
The Trading Standards Business Compliance Manager is central to ensuring we meet our statutory duties, make the best use of our resources and deliver effective regulatory interventions that bring businesses into legal compliance and tackle the greatest harms to consumers and communities.
You will join a small, highly skilled and motivated team of ten operational officers covering the county. The team is recognised for its professionalism, flexibility and strong track record of working with businesses to achieve compliance while taking robust enforcement action where necessary to disrupt and stop illegal activity.
Hybrid working is the norm, with a combination of home-based, field-based and office-based working, providing flexibility while maintaining strong team collaboration and service delivery.
Please read the Job Description and Person Specification carefully, as the role requires specific qualifications and experience to meet the statutory requirements of the service.
If you would like an informal discussion about the role, please contact Peter Gell, Head of Trading Standards, at peter.gell@cambridgeshire.gov.uk or Catherine Pawson, Principal Trading Standards Officer, at catherineM.pawson@cambridgeshire.gov.uk
Interviews will take place 11th - 13th November at New Shire Hall, Alconbury.
What will you be doing?
You will lead a team of highly skilled officers delivering a wide range of statutory Trading Standards functions, including Food Standards, Feed, Licensing, Animal Health and Welfare, Product Safety, Underage Sales, Metrology and Safety at Sports Grounds. Reporting directly to the Head of Service, you will play a key role in ensuring the service continues to deliver effective, intelligence-led and legally compliant interventions across Cambridgeshire.
Day to day, you will provide leadership, support and direction to your team through line management, coaching and professional development. You will oversee complex investigations and enforcement activity, support decision making, monitor performance and ensure the service meets its statutory obligations while making the best use of available resources.
You will work closely with colleagues and partners at local, regional and national level, maintaining strong relationships and helping to resolve emerging issues and challenges. The role also includes representing the service through liaison with councillors, partner organisations, businesses and the wider public.
As legislation and regulatory priorities continue to evolve, you will help ensure the service remains prepared for change, identifying opportunities for improvement and thinking creatively about how we deliver services. You will have a genuine opportunity to influence priorities, shape service development and help ensure Trading Standards continues to be effective in addressing the issues that matter most to residents, consumers and legitimate businesses.
About you
Our officers are experienced, professional and largely self-sufficient. We are looking for a supportive and visible leader who can provide direction when needed, make sound and confident decisions, remove barriers to delivery and maintain effective oversight of complex and sensitive work without unnecessary intervention.
Whilst it is not essential to have qualifications and experience across all the subject areas covered by the team, Food Standards expertise is preferable given the requirements of the new Food Standards Delivery Model and the challenges and opportunities it presents. We are looking for significant knowledge and experience in at least two areas of Trading Standards enforcement.
You will have substantial experience of using a wide range of regulatory and enforcement tools to secure compliance, protect consumers and support legitimate businesses. You will understand how to apply legislation proportionately and effectively and have a strong grasp of the law of evidence to ensure investigations are conducted lawfully, robustly and fairly.
You will be an effective communicator, capable of building strong relationships with colleagues, partners and stakeholders, and confident in balancing operational demands with longer-term service priorities and improvement.
Our benefits
We value our colleagues in Cambridgeshire County Council and have developed a number of benefits in addition to the basics like annual leave, sick pay, pension and mileage…
- A comprehensive wellbeing package to cover all aspects of wellbeing, both in and out of work, which can also be accessed by your family
- Buy up to 4 weeks additional annual leave (pro-rata) through our salary sacrifice scheme
- Take your bank holidays flexibly to better suit your personal circumstances
- Make Additional Voluntary Contributions (Shared AVCs) to your pension with tax and National Insurance savings
- Access to development opportunities, apprenticeships and qualified coaches to support your personal and professional growth
- Paid volunteering hours each year so you can make a positive impact on our community during your normal working day
- Access to Peer Support Groups through our IDEAL staff equality, diversity and inclusion network
- Opportunities to nominate and receive Employee Recognition Awards
- An Our Cambs Rewards account, giving you access to in-store and online discounts as well as our Car Lease and Cycle to Work schemes
Take a look at our Employment Benefits Brochure attached to this advert to find out more.
About us
Cambridgeshire is a great place to work and live with a diverse population, an urban centre in Cambridge, historic Isle of Ely, Huntingdon and St Ives as well as more rural landscapes.
Our four values are central to our culture, driving everything we do.
We are proud to serve the diverse communities of Cambridgeshire and want our workforce to be reflective of this diversity, which we firmly believe benefits our colleagues, the organisation and our communities. If you don’t meet every single requirement in the job role but think this could be you, please don’t be put off. We are committed to building a workplace that is compassionate and inclusive as well as diverse, so if you think you could be a good candidate for this role please consider applying and speak to the recruiting manager if you have any questions.
Our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy, along with our employee network 'IDEAL' and self-organised peer support groups help us to foster an inclusive, supportive and safe working environment where people feel valued, respected, and empowered. We collect relevant diversity data for monitoring as part of the recruitment process to understand the diversity of our applicants and monitor any trends throughout the recruitment processes so that we can take meaningful action.
We are proud to be a Disability Confident Leader. We fully support providing reasonable adjustments throughout our recruitment process, as well as when you join us, and we encourage candidates to contact the Hiring Manager, whose details can be found in the advert, to discuss any adjustment needs. Through a Guaranteed Interview Scheme, we will offer an interview to all applicants who disclose a disability and meet the essential criteria for a job vacancy. On your application form you can indicate you are disabled. Some examples of reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process could include additional time to complete an assessment or printing a document on pastel coloured paper with larger font size and line spacing. We would value talking about what might be possible to enable you to join us and thrive, so if there is something that would help you to do your best during your journey with us, please get in touch.
Visit our jobs and careers section to find out more about our wide range of learning and development opportunities; apprenticeships; our wellbeing package; staff benefits; our commitment to equality, diversity and Inclusion.
Attached documents
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