Delivering a high level of relationship management and attention to detail? This could be the perfect role for you The Opportunity Salary: £35,235 to £37,938 per annum Working Pattern: Full time, 37 hours per week Location: County Hall, Chichester and hybrid working Contract type: Fixed term or Secondment opportunity until September 2025 Interview date: 05 March 2025 As the Contracts Officer, your primary responsibility will be to manage and oversee the contracts related to learning and development, encompassing apprenticeships within our organisation. With the invaluable support of our Central Procurement and Legal teams, you will ensure compliance with Standing Orders and corporate policies, while providing advice, guidance, and assistance on procurement and contract matters to our dedicated internal Learning & Development (L&D) commissioners. You will forge and nurture strong relationships with training providers, committing to sustain high-quality service delivery and ensuring they meet the agreed-upon standards and deliverables. In this pivotal role, you will be the main point of contact within the L&D team for all external training suppliers. It will be your responsibility to ensure that events and solutions are financially viable, protecting the Authority from contractual financial penalties, and to oversee that externally delivered training events run smoothly and effectively. What are we looking for? To be successful in this role, you will need: Strong contract management skills, the ability to build and maintain effective relationships with stakeholders, great attention to detail, and strong organisational skills. To be customer focused and keen to deliver the best service possible to our internal and external customers, being reliable and efficient at all times. This is a busy role with demands from a wide range of stakeholders, requiring the ability to deal with multiple tasks at any one moment ensuring that nothing is left to slip or slide - and important deadlines are met. For more information on the Key Skills as well as the Qualifications and/or experience required, please refer to the Job Description attached. Working for us As well as adding real value to our service users and our communities, as an employer we recognise our employees are central in being able to achieve this. To recognise this we want to help support your development and provide an great place to work ensuring you can fulfil your full potential, have access to a range of benefits including: an excellent local government pension scheme generous holiday entitlement of 27 days (plus opportunity to buy additional leave) a range of flexible working options, depending on your job role maternity, paternity, dependency and adoption leave volunteering opportunities training and development opportunities, including coaching and mentoring a range of discounts giving our staff access to hundreds of offers; groceries, travel, cinema tickets, days out, leisure activities, high street retailers and the opportunity to save over £1,000 a year through our West Sussex Choices benefits platform (see our Staff discounts page if you are a business looking to offer a discount) health and wellbeing benefits including access to our Employee Assistance Programme, Mental Health First Aiders and Voluntary Health Cash Plans For a full list this can be found at our Rewards and Benefits page. Further information The reference number for this role is CRS00902. For an informal conversation or for further information regarding the role, please contact Lindsey Hannant at. For issues or queries regarding your application please contact. Internal candidates wishing to apply for this role will be considered for a secondment position. Please can you therefore discuss and agree this with your manager before applying for this position. To apply, please follow the links below to upload your CV and Cover Letter. In your cover letter please outline your motivations for applying and explaining the skills and experience you can bring to the role (please refer to the key skills) ensuring that any gaps in employment are covered in your CV. Please ensure you have saved the job description attached to the main advert on our website as, once the job has closed, you may not have the opportunity to download again. We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults. This post is subject to 3 years referencing and a health check. Equity, inclusion and accessibility is very important to West Sussex County Council. We welcome and encourage applications from everyone, as this helps us build a diverse and talented workforce, that reflects the communities we serve. We ensure our approach to recruitment is flexible and supportive to enable all applicants to be at their best and to ensure they have the best possible chance of success. We operate a guaranteed interview scheme for applicants that have a disability, are a veteran or are a care leaver. More information can be found on our application help page. CC