Commissioning Enhancing Lives, Empowering Communities
We are excited to offer a rare and rewarding opportunity for an exceptional leader to join our passionate and forward-thinking Commissioning Quality Assurance and Performance Team as the Service Manager.
Our Commissioning Directorate plays a vital role in shaping the future of accommodation and community-based support for children, young people, and adults. We take a whole-life approach, ensuring residents receive the right support at every stage of their journey.
In this role, you will lead a specialist service, working closely with the Head of Service for Adults to drive performance and deliver outstanding outcomes. You will oversee provider relationships and contract monitoring, ensuring services meet the highest standards. As a subject matter expert, you will influence commissioning strategies that make a real difference and champion collaboration with partners, including health services, to maximise public satisfaction.
What were looking for:
- A relevant degree or substantial experience in evidence-based commissioning and staff leadership.
- Strong knowledge of commissioning practices, including working with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and other regulatory bodies.
- A solid understanding of legislation, such as the Care Act, with the ability to lead strategically in a politically diverse environment.
If you would like to help shape services that truly enhance lives across Wiltshire, we would love to hear from you.
Main duties of the job The role involves operational management of a specialist service or workstream with significant impact across the Council, ensuring day-to-day performance in collaboration with the Head of Service. Acting as a service expert, the postholder leads the development and delivery of commissioning strategies to enhance service outcomes. They drive continuous improvement through robust performance management systems, analysing data to inform strategic decisions and presenting findings with recommendations to POGs and POBs.
A key responsibility is ensuring Team Managers deliver efficient, high-quality frontline services, fostering a culture of high performance. The role supports innovation and change across the service and partnerships, while leading recruitment and retention strategies internally and with providers to sustain capacity for over 7,000 individuals. Additionally, the postholder works with inspection leads to maintain CQC readiness, developing action plans as required. They champion co-production and collaborative initiatives with partners, including health, to maximize public satisfaction and transform services in line with customer aspirations, legal requirements, and regulatory standards.
About us Wiltshire Council is the unitary local authority for the county of Wiltshire, England, established in 2009 to provide both county-level and district-level services. The council's vision is to foster strong communities where residents can achieve their potential through empowerment and inclusion. The council focuses on long-term challenges, community engagement, and delivering services that support independent living, reduce inequalities, and promote overall well being.
Key Responsibilities and Services
The council provides a range of essential services to residents, including waste management, public planning, and support for vulnerable populations, such as older adults and people with disabilities.
The council consists of elected councillors who form a cabinet to set the council's direction and priorities. A system of overview and scrutiny ensures accountability for the cabinet's decisions.
The council engages in long-term planning, such as its household waste management strategy, focusing on new approaches and opportunities to manage waste over the next decade and beyond.
The council uses Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) funds to support local infrastructure projects, including roads, schools, and recreational facilities, to manage the impact of development.
Job responsibilities Job Context
Commissioning is a high profile public service provided by the Council in partnership with the local NHS through contractual and partnership agreements, the Voluntary & Community sector, and user led organisations.
The service delivers high quality and evidence based commissioning for adults requiring statutory services, prevention and early help.
Commissioning delivers services to people who need a rapid response to a crisis, need help to maintain their independence where they have complex needs, and promotes preventative services that help people remain well and independent.
The service ensures that individualised care and safeguarding of vulnerability and risk is provided in conjunction with other health and social care services and that the Council performs its statutory duty in relation to the provision of Adult Social Care services.
This post is the Service Manager for Adults Commissioning with a remit of either operational, strategic or commercial.
Strategic commissioning covers commissioning strategies, data, demand forecasting, recommissioning, relationship management, market development and sustainability, the voluntary sector and transformation.
Operational commissioning covers quality assurance, contract management, performance management, risk management and safeguarding.
Commercial covers the brokerage service, including the use of benchmarking tools such as CareCubed or similar, and cost negotiation, annual inflationary uplifts, hospital flow, escalations, oversight of matching people and oversight of issues contract agreements such as CoSA/ToSA.
The service manager is responsible for implementing the strategic direction set by the Director of Commissioning and Head of Adults Commissioning. Supporting the Head of Service and Director the postholder will ensure that evidenced based commissioning is embedded. They will ensure that there is a robust quality assurance framework in place and that at every opportunity we provide value for money. The postholder will maintain a focus on meeting the specific needs of the person and ensuring their voice is reflected in the outcomes. As part of the extended senior management team of the Commissioning directorate the post holder will provide support to ensure that services are delivered to the highest standards, providing robust quality assurance, compliance with all legal and statutory requirements and within an effective and efficient budgetary framework.
Specific duties and responsibilities include:
Undertake operational management of a specialist service, area and/or workstream that has impact across the Council managing day to day performance in conjunction with the relevant head of service.
Service expert with responsibility for leading the identification, development and delivery of effective commissioning strategies for improving service delivery.
Service lead on the continuous development of performance management systems to improve quality and delivery within the strategic, operational and commercial elements of commissioning. Analysing performance data across the service and providers to inform the strategic direction and evidence based decision making. Performance will be monitored through POGs and POBs and the postholder will have responsibility for providing and presenting this data, providing recommendations on actions to improve performance.
Ensuring the performance of Team Managers deliver frontline services within their teams is effective and efficient, driving a high performance culture.
Support and drive innovation and change across the service and wider partnership.
Service lead for the recruitment and retention internally and with our providers, providing support to over 7,000 people, developing strategies and initiatives to support and build service capacity.
Supporting the Head of Service to ensure that services are CQC inspection ready, working with the inspection leads to understand, prepare for and develop action plans related to inspections.
Develop and deliver co production and other initiatives with partners such as health to ensure the highest levels of public satisfaction for the service, to continue to transform the service to meet the aspirations of customers and in accordance with the requirements of the law and external regulation.
Provide leadership across the partnership (including both internal and external partners), demonstrating a breadth of knowledge and skills and willingness to step outside of specialisms.
Engage with customers, carers, the wider community, with staff in the service, the council and with other organisations to promote the provision of high quality opportunities and services which will promote well being and independence.
Work closely with the senior management team across the directorate including operational colleagues to ensure that there is alignment across the directorate in terms of a focus on providing and promoting choice, preventing and delaying statutory services and value for money.
Support the Head of Service with activities within joint programmes with the ICs and other partner agencies, towards integrated approaches to commissioning and joint funded pathways, ensuring effective partnership working to provide delivery of health and social care.
Deputising for the Head of Service . click apply for full job details