Job Details:
Salary range: £22.15 per hour
Work location: Westminster Council House, Marylebone Road, NW1 5PT
Hours per week: Various
Contract type: Casual
Closing date: 19 February 2025
Assessment day: 8 or 9 March 2025
Interview date: 15 - 22 March 2025
About Us:
THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF JESS’S CARE AND UNDERSTANDING
The Register Office in Westminster City Council is a world of extraordinary stories, where people mark the truly significant events of their lives. We oversee the legal formalities of births and deaths and, of course, carry out hundreds of wedding ceremonies.
Westminster boasts some of the world’s most sought-after wedding locations. With big occasions at venues such as Claridge’s and The Savoy, our registrars are in constant demand. But we also take great pleasure in hosting much simpler ceremonies at our iconic Old Marylebone Town Hall. And Jess, an experienced registrar, draws on her background as a dance tutor, sales professional, mother and language teacher to bring just the right level of authority and empathy to each encounter.
So when a bride mislaid her bouquet, Jess stepped up to save the day. She agreed with one of the ushers that they should create a beautiful arrangement from flowers displayed in the Town Hall. Meanwhile, Jess calmed the distraught bride and ensured everything stayed on schedule.
It’s just one of the many ways Jess and her team think on their feet and work together to make sure everyone’s special day runs smoothly.
The Role:
As a Sessional Ceremonies Registrar within our team, you can make your own powerful contribution to Westminster’s residents and service users as they mark significant occasions in their lives.
Westminster Registration Services is considered to be one of the best registration services in the country, for a very good reason. We enjoy working as a diverse and collaborative team, in which our people thrive on making ceremonies even more special.
Join us in this team, and we will provide you with full training to help you develop a role that you truly love!
Providing registrar services across more than 160 licensed venues including The Ritz Hotel, The Houses of Parliament and London Zoo, this is a unique opportunity to work in some of London’s most iconic destinations. Better yet, your natural ‘home’ will be the country’s most well-known town hall venue (The Old Marylebone Town Hall) – a place that hosts more than 3 000 ceremonies a year. In fact, this iconic venue celebrated 100-years of hosting ceremonies in 2024, so to celebrate this epic milestone, our team of Registrars conducted 100 ceremonies in one day, which were livestreamed by the BBC! It’s events like these that remind our team of the wonderful value that they’re contributing to other people’s lives.
Working 2-3 shifts a month on a casual contract (paid hourly with enhancements for weekends and Bank Holidays), you will conduct marriage, civil partnership and celebratory ceremonies at the weekends and occasional Fridays. Without ever losing sight of the fact that these are important legal ceremonies, you will enjoy being part of the happiest occasions, seeing to it that every ceremony is as unique as the people involved. This will mean working with couples to help them plan their special occasions, ensuring their ideal ceremony content is permissible within the law.
There is of course a more challenging facet of our work, in which we must remain alert to any signs of sham, forced or predatory marriages. Raising concerns and working with the relevant safeguarding teams to protect the people involved, you will be a trusted ally to people from all walks of life. You will also confirm the details of people involved in ceremonies and ensure the validity of venue licenses, so a sharp eye for detail will be essential.
Join us in this vital work, and we are confident that you will find a role that you love. Many of our team conduct their duties alongside other careers, so if you are looking for an opportunity that may well feel more like a wonderful pastime than a job, we’d love to hear from you.
Please refer to the Job Description for more information.
About You:
We work in a very busy environment, so to make the most of this opportunity you will combine an enthusiastic approach with a sharp eye for detail and fantastic organisation skills. It goes without saying that amazing people skills and the capacity to present to large audiences will be essential to your success, and you will be keen to both serve the public and learn from experienced team-members.
Combining discretion with empathy, and with a focus on making people feel special, this is a role in which you will be encouraged to bring your whole self to work. You’ll need to remain calm under pressure, and your flexible approach will mean you’re happy to talk to couples outside of standard working hours. From a practical point of view, you’ll also have good IT skills with the capacity to accurately and clearly enter information into legal documents.
Please note that this recruitment process will be in two stages, and initial shortlisted candidates will need to be available for an initial assessment day on 8th or 9th March. Successful candidates will also need to be available for a full training day on the 9th May.
Westminster City Council is committed to supporting Care Leavers into the workplace. Care Leavers seeking their first job and who wish to be considered under our scheme, will automatically be invited to interview should they meet the essential criteria for the role.
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.
At Westminster City Council, we pride ourselves on being an inclusive workplace and employer of choice. We encourage and welcome applications from people from all backgrounds and aim to have a workforce that, at all levels, represents the communities we serve. We champion equality, diversity, inclusion and wellbeing and aim to create a workplace where everyone feels valued, has a sense of belonging and is empowered to be their best, that is the Westminster Way. To find out more about how we do this visit
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.
The Council is a Disability Confident Employer. If you have declared a disability in your application, we guarantee an interview if you meet the essential criteria of the job. If you are invited for interview, you will be asked if you need any reasonable adjustments in order to attend, and we will make these wherever possible.