Business Support & Planning Manager

West Sussex County Council; Chichester; Hybrid; GBP 40,000 - 50,000; Full time

Job summary

A local government council in Chichester is seeking a Lead Delivery Manager to enhance operational leadership and provide support to teams. This full-time hybrid role involves managing various initiatives and ensuring exceptional customer service. Ideal candidates will have experience in delivery management, strategic planning, and team leadership. The position also offers a range of benefits, including a local government pension scheme and flexible working options.

Benefits

Excellent local government pension scheme

Generous holiday entitlement

Flexible working options

Training and development opportunities

Health and wellbeing benefits

Qualifications

• Experienced in delivering various initiatives for customers.
• Confident in managing multiple teams and ensuring customer excellence.
• Proven history in setting up new projects and managing their success.

Responsibilities

• Lead and facilitate involvement from partners across West Sussex.
• Enhance operational leadership and support individuals and families.
• Provide high-quality line management with a coaching approach.

Skills

Delivery management

Team management

Initiative development

Strategic thinking

Cross directorate collaboration

Prioritization of tasks

Customer service excellence

Job description

Working Pattern: Full time, 37 hours per week

Contract type: Permanent

Location: County Hall, Chichester or Centenary House, Crawley and working from home (Hybrid)

Shortlisting date: week commencing 12th January 2026

Interview date: week commencing 19th January 2026

Playing a lead role and facilitating involvement from partners across West Sussex, this activity includes supporting individuals and families from specific cohorts (e.g. Afghans, Ukrainians), wider schemes (e.g. UK Resettlement) on a temporary/transitional basis and over multiple years. This is in addition to requirements for fast paced crisis response, including at Gatwick Airport, providing urgent humanitarian assistance and protection.

This role will enhance operational leadership capacity within RRMS by taking on a number of Team Manager direct reports who, in conjunction with partners, are leading their teams to deliver wrap around support provision for individuals and families as well as focusing on the continuous service improvement function for associated back‑office functions operating at scale countywide.

Providing high quality line management with a supportive coaching/mentoring approach to workforce development you will be people focused in your approach, whilst embedding a rigorous approach to service improvement heightening resilience whilst bringing efficiencies to allow for growth in workflow and to maximise the delivery of key objectives.

What are we looking for?

• Experienced delivery Manager, able to deliver a variety of deliverables for our customers covering a wide variety of subject areas.
• Confident in managing a number of teams, directly or indirectly, ensuring that customer excellence is applied, maximum streamlined processes are followed and ultimately delivering a great customer service.
• Experienced setting up new initiatives from the beginning, identifying resource requirements, forecasting demand levels, developing processes and project managing from implementation to go live, and monitoring success throughout the project.
• Someone who loves to plan, thinking ahead to what customer demand may be and planning how best to respond.
• Demonstrate a keen appetite for improving how we do things and a proven history of taking an organisation with you and leading a service to make that happen.
• You’ll be able to employ fantastic cross directorate collaboration and organisational skills influencing and supporting others to contribute and deliver improvements in the service.
• Highly skilled in prioritizing many very fast-paced tasks, bringing diverse working groups together to make decisions quickly and identifying the area’s most in need of your attention.
• Brilliant strategic thinker and able to influence services, senior leaders and make reasoned augments for why we need to do the things we do based upon sound evidence whilst meeting residents ever-changing needs and expectations driving through opportunities.

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 a 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(plus opportunity to buy additional leave)
• a range of flexible working options,
• maternity, paternity, dependency and adoption leave
• volunteering opportunities
• training and development opportunities, including coaching and mentoring
• health and wellbeing benefits

For a full list this can be found at our Rewards and Benefits page.

Further Information

The reference number for this role is CPP01260.

For issues or queries regarding your application please contact [e-mail].

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 save 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 a DBS check, 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 is a care leaver. More information can be found on our application help page.