Description The Support Services Portfolio function has the following primary responsibilities: Managing the gateway from delivery into live service provision. It ensures new/amended services are understood, supportable and sustainable before being accepted into live. Ensuring existing services are managed effectively by defining, governing and enforcing processes including: Incident & Problem Management Change, Configuration and Release Management Continuity and Availability Management Risk Management SLA Management Reporting on Service Management performance across the post holder’s portfolio, identifying performance issues/opportunities for improvement and creating appropriate action plans The Support Services Portfolio Team Manager will be responsible for the day to day leadership and management of the Support Portfolio Function 1 to ensure it is able to carry out its specific responsibilities and deliver on-going demonstrable value to the organisation - engaging and developing staff to realise their full potential, establishing and championing best practice, and continuously improving the performance of people, processes and technology. The post holder will be responsible for accepting newly developed technology and digital services into live operational use, ensuring they are fit-for-purpose, well understood documented, have appropriate disaster recovery and business continuity plans and are supportable. This post-holder is responsible for monitoring and reporting on the performance of existing services for the Head of Service Management, and will be expected to identify under/over performing services and make appropriate recommendations to remediate. The post holder will be responsible for the maintenance and development of strategy, policy, systems and procedures, performance management, together with the efficient and effective use of resources. The post holder is responsible to the Head of Service Management but will be expected to work without direct supervision and will be required to make decisions using their own initiative and experience Key Responsibilities: Effective leadership and management of the Service Support Portfolio team; Design, implement and facilitate Service Management processes; Supplier and relationship manager for Services owned within the portfolio Ensure Suppliers are held accountable for Service Availability, Change Management, Problem Management and Incident Management. Ensure Service Credits are identified, recorded, reported on and recovered through Service Review meeting To represent the force at local, regional and national conferences as required; Negotiate with partner agencies, suppliers and contractors in order to achieve desirable outcomes Provide specialist information and/or advice to assist and influence senior colleagues/customers to make decisions relating to significant business issues; Revise or develop procedure and policy for approval and contribute to their successful implementation in order to deliver appropriate benefits and ensure external (e.g. legislative) requirements are met; Assist the Senior Manager in formulating strategic direction for the team and unit; Ensure existing services meet agreed Service Level Agreements; Monitoring Health and Safety issues and raise issues where appropriate; Provide a forum that allows staff to raise issues and suggestions; Maintain strong relationships with customers to improve the reputation of IT & Digital and strengthen working relationships; Oversee and manage the introduction of all services into the live environment across IT & Digital; Define and own the acceptance criteria for developed services to ensure that services meet standardised functional, operational and quality requirements; Ensure that the acceptance criteria have been met prior to the introduction of the service into the live environment; Ensure that all new or changed services satisfy the readiness criteria and are supplied in time for ‘live’ deployment to the agreed quality standards; Essential: Must demonstrate proven experience and ability to: Develop the knowledge and skills of both team members and individuals; Respond to complaints; Demonstrable experience in customer and supplier relationship management; Direct line management experience across a range of disciplines and levels – including recruitment, development, appraisals, and objectives; Demonstrable experience of directly communicating with senior managers from a customer service perspective using written and oral methods; Experience of dealing with grievances; Directly communicate with customers at a variety of levels using written and oral methods; Co-ordinate support activities across a wide range of technical teams; Support and maintain software solutions; Create and maintain technical documentation to high standards; Understand business and user requirements; Promote equality, diversity and Human Rights in working practices; Plan and organise work with short and long term timeframes; Plan and progress work within general guidelines, using initiative and judgment without recourse to senior members of staff. Maintain standards for security of information; Chair internal and external meetings with internal stakeholders and external suppliers Closing Date: 11/02/2025 at 23:59 Interviews: TBD Vetting: Successful applicants will be required to pass Management Vetting and Security Clearance scrutiny prior to commencing their role, this will include a full background & financial disclosure as part of the vetting process. Medical: Appointment to this role will be dependent upon successfully medical checks, which may include a drugs test and if required a fitness test. Benefit Statement: By choosing to join West Midlands Police you will receive an enhanced benefits package including: Fair remuneration with progression opportunities and access to a very competitive pension scheme. Enhanced annual leave in addition to public holiday entitlements. Discounts across travel, parking, daily costs of living and leisure activities. A comprehensive wellbeing package including 24/7 support, free eye tests and flu jabs. Prospective officers and staff must be held to a higher standard of behaviour and accountability than members of the public, and that therefore their right to privacy can be fettered in certain circumstances. This is to ensure that members of the police are fully aware and accountable for the unique powers entrusted to them and the standards of professional behaviour they swear to uphold. West Midlands Police is a Disability Confident Leader - the highest level an organisation can achieve under the scheme run by the Department of Work and Pensions. As part of our commitment we operate a ‘Disability Confident Interview Scheme’ - all candidates who declare a disability and meet the essential criteria for the role will be offered an interview. It is important to note that there may be occasions where it is not practicable or appropriate to interview all disabled people who meet the essential criteria for the job. For example: in certain recruitment situations such as high-volume, seasonal and high-peak times, the employer may wish to limit the overall numbers of interviews offered to both disabled people and non-disabled people. In these circumstances, the employer could select the candidates who best meet the essential criteria for the job, as they would do for non-disabled applicants. "Diversity and Inclusion Vision: Maximise the potential of people from all backgrounds through a culture of fairness and inclusion to deliver the best service for our communities