Leisure Manager - Community Leisure

About the role

The Leisure Manager - Community Leisure, is an exciting opportunity to lead the development and management of community leisure facilities and assets across North Northamptonshire. The role will oversee a diverse portfolio including sports pavilions, football pitches, tennis courts, bowling greens and key devolved and leased facilities, while driving investment, improvement projects and long-term sustainability within the local leisure infrastructure. You will play a key role in ensuring facilities remain accessible, high quality and responsive to community needs.

What will you be doing?

As the post holder, you will lead on the management and development of community leisure facilities across North Northamptonshire, acting as the principal contact for a range of council-owned, devolved and leased assets. You will identify funding opportunities, develop capital and revenue investment bids and project manage facility improvement projects from concept through to delivery.

Working with partners including sports clubs, community organisations, governing bodies and funding agencies, you will help secure investment, strengthen partnerships and increase opportunities for residents to participate in sport and physical activity. You will also support the delivery of the Active Communities Framework, Leisure Facilities Strategy and Playing Pitch Strategy while ensuring effective governance, financial management and compliance across projects.

About you

We are looking for an experienced leisure, sport or wellbeing professional with a proven track record of facility development, project management and partnership working. You will have experience of managing projects, budgets and funding applications, alongside a strong understanding of community leisure provision and the role it plays in tackling health inequalities and supporting active lifestyles.

Successful candidates will possess excellent communication, organisational and stakeholder management skills and be confident working collaboratively with a wide range of partners. Knowledge of leisure infrastructure, funding opportunities and strategic leisure planning, combined with a passion for improving community access to sport and physical activity, will help you succeed in this role.

This role offers an opportunity to make a significant impact on the quality, accessibility and future development of leisure facilities across North Northamptonshire, helping to create healthier, more active and connected communities.

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)