Consultation and Engagement Officer

About the role

We are looking for a Consultation and Engagement Officer to join our Consultation and Engagement Team within Enabling Services.

This is an exciting opportunity to help ensure the Council's decisions are informed by local people, responsive to community needs, and transparent in their development.

Working closely with our Consultation and Engagement Specialist, you'll play a key role in delivering consultation and engagement activity across North Northamptonshire Council. As part of a small, busy team, you will support services to plan and deliver meaningful engagement with residents, partners, community organisations and other stakeholders, helping to shape policies, strategies and services.

You will use a range of consultation methods, survey platforms and engagement tools to gather insight, encourage participation and promote meaningful involvement. You'll also provide advice and guidance on best practice, helping services to design effective consultation activities and meet accessibility and data protection requirements.

We're looking for someone with experience of delivering consultation and engagement activities, excellent communication skills, and the ability to build positive relationships with colleagues, partners and communities. You'll be creative, organised and adaptable, with the confidence to manage competing priorities and work both independently and collaboratively.

This is an opportunity to ensure local voices are heard in the decisions that shape North Northamptonshire's services, policies and future direction.

What will you be doing?

As a member of the corporate Consultation and Engagement Team, you will:

• Design, coordinate and deliver a range of consultation and engagement activities across council services.
• Support services to identify appropriate engagement approaches and participation methods.
• Develop surveys, feedback mechanisms, workshops, events and other opportunities for residents and stakeholders to share their views.
• Use a range of consultation software and digital engagement tools to support the delivery and evaluation of activities.
• Collate, analyse and interpret qualitative and quantitative feedback, producing clear reports and insights to support decision-making.
• Build effective relationships with residents, partners, community groups and colleagues across the organisation to encourage participation and strengthen engagement.
• Promote effective engagement practices, ensuring activities are accessible and reach a diverse range of audiences, including seldom-heard groups.
• Ensure compliance with relevant legislation and good practice, including GDPR, and accessibility requirements.
• Support the effective administration, systems and processes that underpin the service.

About you

You will have experience of planning and delivering meaningful consultation and engagement activities, together with a sound understanding of participation methods, research techniques and approaches to involving diverse audiences.

You will be confident building relationships across the organisation and working collaboratively with residents, partners and community organisations.

You will have strong organisational and analytical skills, with the ability to interpret qualitative and quantitative data and present clear, evidence-based findings. You will also have experience of using survey and engagement software to gather, analyse and report on feedback.

You'll be comfortable working as part of a small, supportive team while also taking ownership of your work and managing your own priorities. Above all, you'll be passionate about involving people in decisions that affect them and helping services make better use of community insight.

Our Benefits

Here at North Northamptonshire Council, we’re transforming for the better, using all our creativity and imagination to create the best life for our local people.

You’ll find that we have a wide range of careers that may be more surprising than you think!

Why choose us?

We offer a vibrant working environment with:

• a competitive salary
• a pension scheme, where we pay a significant contribution on top of your contribution. It provides life cover and ill-health protection.
• lots of opportunities to develop your skills, knowledge and potential in a large unitary council
• generous leave entitlement (28 days, rising to 33 days) and bank holidays, plus the option to buy up to an extra 10 days
• hybrid and flexible working arrangements, where practicable for service needs to help you with a healthy work-life balance.

We provide a range of great benefits such as an Employee Assistance Programme, an Employee Benefits Scheme, wellbeing support, travel rates at HMRC rates, as well as supporting a range of active Employee Network Groups.

About us

Our Values and Behaviours

Our values define who we are and how we operate, by forming the foundation for how we interact with our customers, colleagues and provide our services. They are also at the forefront of our decision making and delivery and are:

Customer-focused
Respectful
Efficient
Supportive
Trustworthy

Our key commitments help ensure that the priorities we make, now and in the future, maintain the necessary breadth of focus in those areas that we believe matter most.

Disability Confident Employer

We are proud to be a recognised Disability Confident Employer and is committed to providing an inclusive recruitment process and will offer an interview to disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria for the role.

Our Employment and Disability Service provides bespoke support to individuals facing barriers to employment, helping them work towards their goals to start, stay and succeed in employment. For further information please click here The Employment and Disability Service (EADS) | North Northamptonshire Council

Armed Forces Community

The council obtained the Gold status award for the Defence Employer Recognition Scheme (ERS).

Further information can be found at Jobs and careers | North Northamptonshire Council (northnorthants.gov.uk)