Principal Scrutiny Officer

Job description

Contract Terms

Contract Type: Full -Time, Permanent
Salary: PO4-PO5 £46,041 – £52,116 per annum
Interview: 15th January 2025
Closing Date: Sunday 5th January 2025

About Haringey

Haringey is a fantastic place to live and work – the world in one borough. A place brimming with creativity, personality, radicalism, and community. It is a place where we stand up for each other. A place that is proudly distinctive. We’ll be celebrating all this and more as the “rebel borough” when we are the 2027 London Borough of Culture.

Our history champions change-makers and everyday rebels; revelling in our differences, battling discrimination, championing equality, and doing things our own way. Haringey’s people are a huge asset, with knowledge, expertise, and passion. Our staff members embody our organisational values: Caring, Creative, Courageous, Collaborative and Community-focused. These values keep us looking forward, ambitious for the future, and continuously striving to do our very best for all of our residents.

About the role

Proactively supporting overview and Scrutiny in Haringey, taking lead responsibility for specific areas of the scrutiny function to ensure an effective and efficient scrutiny service.
Helping to improve the performance, development and delivery of council services and those of partner agencies by providing advice to Scrutiny Members using legislative, policy, project management and research expertise. This will involve analysing information and providing advice and interpretation to Members.
To support the development of the Scrutiny work programme, giving regard to the priorities of Councillors, the executive, officers and the community. This will involve informal engagement and arranging consultation with key stakeholders, and developing ideas for scrutiny projects into realistic, scoped out proposals.
To support and develop an effective and efficient statutory scrutiny function at Haringey Council. – To ensure the overall development of the Council’s scrutiny function in a way that is conducive to constructive working relations between the Council’s executive and non-executive Members.
Ensuring that the running of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee and/ or Sub-Committee and or Panels complies with all constitutional and relevant local government legislative requirements and providing advice to Councillors and officers as required. -Working effectively with elected Members and senior officers to deliver the Council’s scrutiny function, requiring integrity, diplomacy, confidence and sound judgement. – Delivering scrutiny reviews that are well-evidenced, objective and impartial.This involves identifying and engaging key witnesses and evidence and producing reasoned, well-written reports with practical recommendations.
Working with colleagues across the organisation to assist ensuring the Council’s decision-making is transparent and understandable to the public.

About you

You will be working in Democratic Services and as part of a sub team of three scrutiny officers . However, you will work with teams across the council and you need to be proactive self-starter with excellent interpersonal, communication, organisational and IT skills.

Our ideal candidate should possess confidence and willingness to lead, guide and influence members and officers on adhering to the principles of the scrutiny function in the council as well as promoting the benefits of this statutory provision.
You will need to be able to manage a demanding workload within our corporate deadlines, apply project management skills, compile well researched scrutiny reviews that involve a range of stakeholders and make a difference to service delivery and partnership working.

You will also need to have excellent diplomacy skills and good understanding of the communities in Haringey to enable effective engagement and interactions on key local issues. You will also need good IT skills and have proficiency in Microsoft Office applications as well as good understanding of video conferencing applications. If you feel you meet the above requirements and have excellent knowledge of local government and the statutory scrutiny function, we would like to hear from you.

Working for Haringey

At Haringey Council we are committed to creating a workplace culture where all our people feel valued, included, and able to be their best at work, and we recognise the benefits of a diverse workforce so welcome applications from all ethnicities and communities so that we continue to make a difference to our residents and community. 

Our benefits package includes a leave entitlement up to 31 days + bank holidays, potential hybrid working opportunities, health and wellbeing support, a generous local government pension scheme and a range of discount schemes across leisure and culture that provide both financial and money-saving discounts.