Salary: £55,057 to £58,829 per annum
Contract Type: Fixed Term/Secondment until 31/03/2028 due to specific funding.
Working Pattern: Full time – 37 hours per week
Location: County Hall, Chichester - Hybrid working
Interview date/s: 26th-27th August 2026
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.
West Sussex County Council is a diverse organisation that provides services to more than 850,000 residents every day. We are ambitious in seeking to improve outcomes for children, developing a learning culture that supports our drive for continuous service improvement.
We are looking for an experienced project manager to deliver a range of operational and strategic projects across the directorate. You will be responsible for the on-going co-ordination, and delivery of a range of operational and strategic projects across the directorate. This will include day to day responsibility for all aspects of the projects, ensuring that they deliver on time, to cost and to a good standard. Key to this is the effective management of project definition, scoping, risks and issues to ensure successful delivery and measurable impact.
Reporting to the Principal Programme Manager, you will ensure that projects are appropriately prioritised depending on directorate need, supporting projects across both the operational and strategic commissioning service areas.
You will need to be able to demonstrate a clear understanding of how robust project co-ordination can support continuous improvement and change using a variety of project management techniques.
Working With Us
This role will play a key part in supporting the delivery of West Sussex County Council's SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities) Reform Programme. Working across services and with a wide range of stakeholders, you will lead and coordinate projects that contribute to the implementation of SEND improvement and reform priorities, helping to drive sustainable change and improve outcomes for children and young people with SEND and their families.
As an employer we recognise that it is our employees that are central to everything we do. We aim to create a supportive and dynamic working environment where employees can achieve their full potential, achieve a healthy work-life balance and are rewarded for the work they do. Upon joining us you will have access to a range of benefits including:
- an excellent local government pension scheme
- generous holiday entitlement of 30 days (plus opportunity to buy additional leave)
- a range of flexible working options, depending on your job role
- maternity, paternity, dependency and adoption leave
- volunteering opportunities
- training and development opportunities, including coaching and mentoring
- a range of discounts giving our staff access to hundreds of offers; groceries, travel, cinema tickets, days out, leisure activities, high street retailers and the opportunity to save over £1,000 a year through our West Sussex Choices benefits platform (see our Staff discounts page if you are a business looking to offer a discount)
- health and wellbeing benefits including access to our Employee Assistance Programme, Mental Health First Aiders and Voluntary Health Cash Plans
For a full list this can be found at our Rewards and Benefits page.
About You
To be successful in the role you will need to:
- Engage with key stakeholders to ensure relevant aspects of the
business are analysed, and changes successfully implemented.
- Use recognised techniques and approaches for analysing &
designing a business and its processes and embedding sustainable change.
- Be able to implement new processes and assess the impact of the modelled process on service delivery, identifying any enablers and dependencies to successful implementation and engaging with all key stakeholders necessary to implement proposed changes.
- Have a post graduate professional qualification relevant to programme, project or change management or equivalent level of significant experience.
- Understand the human aspects and factors influencing change, with the ability to develop strategies, techniques and strategic alliances with key stakeholders.
- Have experience in delivering customer focused services that will improve services in the future through resource planning, creative problem solving and managing projects and strategies.
For more information on the Key Skills as well as the Qualifications and/or experience required, please refer to the Job Description attached.
Further Information
The reference number for this role is CAFHE06497.
For an informal conversation or for further information regarding the role, please contact Nigel Ireson (Acting Principal Project Manager) at [email protected].
For issues or queries regarding your application please contact [email protected]
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 ensure you have saved 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 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 are a care leaver. More information can be found on our application help page.
