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Job Description

Organisation: London Borough of Waltham Forest

Salary: PO10 £68,784 - £72,399
Contract Type: Full-time/Permanent

Working hours per week: 36

Application Deadline: 03/08/2026

Proposed Interview Date(s): TBC

Reference: 2078

About Us:

Bursting with culture, energy, and opportunity, the London Borough of Waltham Forest is a fantastic and exciting place to work.

We are a highly ambitious borough. Driven by culture and the innate creativity of our residents, we have developed new and innovative ways to build our communities. Our Council is relentlessly resident-focused, insight-led, digitally driven and commercially minded; a Council focused on meeting the needs of our existing and future residents.

London Borough of Waltham Forest is one of the Mayor of London’s Good Work Standard employers. This accreditation is a proof of our commitment to creating a healthy, fair and inclusive workplace. This includes fair pay and conditions, workplace well-being, skills and progression and diversity and recruitment.

About the role:

Many residents in Waltham Forest are facing persistent and entrenched challenges - from rising living costs to an affordable housing crisis. These pressures are not felt equally. Long-standing inequalities mean some residents experience poorer outcomes and face more barriers to living the life they want to lead.

To meet these challenges, we must maintain a razor-sharp focus on where inequality is emerging, where it is deepening, and where it can be prevented. We want to help the Council confront these realities head on, ensuring that our ambition for a more equal borough is translated into practical, evidence led action that reduces disparity and supports long term resilience.

To this aim we are seeking to recruit a highly experienced Senior Strategy and Policy Manager (Equalities) to develop and deliver the Council's strategic and community-facing approach to equalities, including shaping and implementing high quality policy and strategy that will tackle cross cutting challenges facing the borough and the Council.

We are a Home Office–licensed sponsor; however, for this specific role we are not able to provide Skilled Worker visa sponsorship. To be considered, you must already hold a form of UK work authorisation that does not require sponsorship.

>> Click here to download the Role Profile <<

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead the development and delivery of a first-class community-facing equalities function for the council.
• Lead the strategic input, and embed equalities into the council’s priority projects and programmes, driving them forward and championing the outcomes.
• Lead and drive culture change around equalities and champion it within a complex organisation.
• Develop the Strategy and Policy service offer, within the Strategy & Change Directorate.
• Provide urgent support and advice to Council departments and the Cabinet as needed.
• Build relationships with key stakeholders and partners across the borough and region.
• Keep abreast of latest policy ideas and best practice across areas of interest in the public sector.
  

Qualifications and Requirements:

• At least 3 years’ experience of strategy or policy development in central, local government, public body or think tank with a focus on tackling on inequality
• Working with politicians and senior stakeholders.
• Collaborative strategy or policy development with external organisations
• Managing large complex projects and programmes
• Partnership working with a range of public or private agencies.
• Ability to develop participatory approaches with communities to tackling inequality
• Highly skilled influencer, negotiator, and networker.
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills.
• Ability to respond rapidly to requests for written briefs and information.
• Ability to conduct and analyse research
• Ability to work flexibly and quickly get to grips with new areas and support others to do so
• The ability to work creatively to solve problems
• A good understanding of the issues facing local government and the way in which local government broadly operates.
• Understanding of the public policy making process.
• The ability to operate with sensitivity within a political environment
• Prepared to challenge existing thinking in a positive manner
• Working with residents/stakeholders to meaningfully shape strategy development.
  

Indicative qualifications

• Educated to degree level or equivalent standard
  

Terms and conditions:

The below terms and conditions apply to this role:

• Satisfactory employment references and CIFAS identity checks;
• Satisfactory declaration of interest;
• As a public authority, we must ensure that members of staff in public-facing roles are able to speak fluent English. This means that they must have a command of spoken English, with confidence and accuracy, sufficient for the effective performance of their role. This requirement does not refer to any particular English language qualifications, regional or international accents, dialects, speech impediments or the tone of conversations. It does not require staff to speak only in English.

How to Apply:

Interested candidates are invited to submit their applications online by pressing the ‘Apply’ button below. This includes a supporting statement that outlines to us how your skills and experience make you a good candidate for this vacancy.

We reserve the right to close this vacancy early if we receive sufficient applications for the role. Therefore, if you are interested, please submit your application as early as possible.

Equal Opportunity Employer:

Waltham Forest is a diverse borough where diversity is valued and is integral to both, service delivery and employment of its staff. The Council is proud of its rich mix of communities and as the largest employer in the area, it works hard to respond to the changing needs of its population. We use our statutory duties on race, gender and disability equality and best practice in respect of age, faith and sexual orientation to ensure equality of opportunity in the workplace. The Council is committed to meeting its 4 equality objectives: - Promoting equality of opportunity - Opposing all forms of discrimination, intolerance and disadvantage - Ensuring our workforce reflects the diverse communities of Waltham Forest at all levels. - Providing fair, appropriate, accessible and excellent Services to all. Respecting Diversity is a core Council value.

To support the above and reduce the risk of bias in its recruitment activities, the council is operating an anonymous shortlisting process, which hides personal information that can identify individuals until their application has been considered for shortlisting. The council also operates a scheme whereby, for jobs graded up to and including scale SO2, internal candidates are considered first. This includes those candidates who self-identify as having a disability for the purposes of the Disability Confident scheme. For more information, please refer to our recruitment and selection policy.

We are keen to support employees to balance their working life with other commitments. Therefore, wherever possible, we will consider working arrangements that suit an individual's personal circumstances whilst still meeting the needs of the Council. If you would like to discuss the possible flexible working options that might be applicable to this role, please contact the person named below or feel free to discuss this during your interview.

For more information on the benefits of working for the Council, please visit https://www.walthamforest.gov.uk/jobs-and-training/find-jobs-and-other-opportunities/working-us.

Contact Information:

If you have any questions about this vacancy or the application process, please contact Tom Pickup at tom.pickup@walthamforest.gov.uk

If you have any technical issues when trying to apply for this post, please contact our Recruitment Team via email at recruitment@walthamforest.gov.uk.

The Council’s preference is for online application. However, if you have a disability and are unable to complete an online application, please email recruitment@walthamforest.gov.uk so we can arrange an alternative application method.

Click here for further information on the Human Resources recruitment privacy notice.

Fraud Awareness Notice
The London Borough of Waltham Forest only advertises vacancies via our official website and approved recruitment platforms (e.g. Jobsgopublic).

We will never ask for payment or request sensitive personal or financial information as part of our recruitment process.

If you are contacted by a third party claiming to represent the Council, please verify the vacancy via our official careers website before sharing any information.

If you have concerns about a job advert or communication, please report it to:
fraud@walthamforest.gov.uk