Strategic Safeguarding Manager

About the job

Salary: £53,460 - £56,681 a year plus £3,203 car benefit allowance plus £2,500 Market Rate Supplement
Hours per week: 37
Contract type: Permanent

We are seeking a confident and collaborative Strategic Safeguarding Manager to lead and champion the safeguarding and Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) agenda across all agencies in Luton.

In this influential role, you will provide strategic leadership, expert advice, and professional support to ensure multi-agency safeguarding policies, procedures, and practices are effectively developed, implemented, and continuously improved. You will play a central role in progressing and promoting the work of the Luton Safeguarding Adults Board (LSAB), contributing to its priorities and workstreams while offering independent, objective professional challenge and oversight.

You will work closely with Adult Social Care, wider council directorates, and partner organisations to ensure safeguarding responsibilities are clearly understood and embedded across the system. A key part of your role will be to strengthen partnership working, enabling agencies to respond proactively and consistently to safeguarding responsibilities.

The successful candidate will also lead on ensuring that safeguarding and DoLS legislation, national and local policy, Safeguarding Adult Review recommendations, and LSAB decisions are translated into effective operational practice. You will continuously review systems and processes, driving improvements that ensure learning is embedded, performance is strengthened, and vulnerable adults are protected.

This role is ideal for a strategic thinker who can balance professional independence with strong partnership engagement, influence senior stakeholders, and maintain a clear focus on achieving high standards of safeguarding practice.

Please note this role does not attract sponsorship.

About you

You are a qualified and professionally registered Social Worker, Occupational Therapist, Nurse, or equivalent, and a qualified Best Interest Assessor (BIA) with substantial post-qualification experience in safeguarding. You have led strategic safeguarding developments at a senior level and are confident managing complex inter-agency work and partnerships.

You bring strong leadership and management experience, with a proven ability to develop staff, build effective professional networks, and deliver strategies, policies, and practice improvements that achieve positive outcomes. You have experience undertaking audits, quality assurance activity, and authorising assessments to maintain high standards of practice.

An excellent communicator, you influence and negotiate with tact and diplomacy at all levels, confidently chair complex meetings, and manage challenge and conflict constructively. You work effectively under pressure, meeting deadlines while managing competing priorities and maintaining high-quality service delivery. You also possess strong and up-to-date knowledge of safeguarding, mental capacity, and deprivation of liberty legislation, guidance, and best practice.

About us

Our ambitious Luton 2040 Vision – that no-one in Luton will have to live in poverty – is at the heart of everything we do. We recognise that our people are remarkable, talented, committed and passionate about serving our residents.

The people of Luton depend heavily on this council – and that means our workforce! Are you ready to realise the remarkable and help us deliver our vision?

We welcome applications from all sections of the community and are committed to developing a workforce that reflects the diversity of our borough

Application process

Because of the nature of this job, it will be necessary for the appropriate level of criminal record disclosure to be undertaken. This post is exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 and therefore applicants are required to declare all unspent cautions and convictions; and also any adult cautions (simple or conditional), and spent convictions that are not protected as defined by the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (as amended in 2020). A person’s criminal record will not in itself prevent a person from being appointed to this post. Applicants will not be refused posts because of offences which are not relevant to, and do not place them at or make them a risk in, the role for which they are applying. However in the event of the employment being taken up, any failure to disclose such offence, as detailed above, will result in dismissal or disciplinary action by the Authority.

Additional information

We offer a range of excellent staff benefits which include:

• From 25 to 32 days’ annual leave:linked to length of service and grade
• Buying annual leave scheme:buy up to 20 days additional annual leave
• Career Pathways:step up in your career or move into a specialist area
• Pension scheme:with generous employer contributions of up to 19.2 per cent (at April 2026) and 3x salary death in service grant
• Generous relocation package:up to £8,000 (subject to eligibility)
• Employee Assistance Programme:a free, 24/7 confidential counselling and wellbeing support service available to all employees, their partner or spouse and dependent children over 16 still living at home
• Work/life balance:flexible working options including working from home where possible. We welcome requests for flexible working arrangements including part-time hours and alternative working patterns
• Training and support:unlimited access to development courses, mentoring and support and clear career pathways
• Staff offers:includes discounts on your MOT, gym and fitness, restaurants and salons
• Arriva Travel Club:great value savings on local bus travel
• Friday Funday Socials -One Friday every 2 months where we encourage our staff to get together to socialise after work

Available documents

Attached documents are available under links. Clicking a document link will initialize its download.

• download: PREF105892 202601 M5 Strategic Safeguarding Manager (1).doc
• download: Luton_Values_Flyer.pdf