Communications Team Leader - Abingdon, United Kingdom - South Oxfordshire District Council

South Oxfordshire District Council

Verified Company

Abingdon, United Kingdom

1 week ago

Posted by:

Tom O´Connor

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Description

Salary and grade:

Starting at £50,764 per year, Grade 8
Duration of role
: Permanent Hours per week
: 37 Location
: Hybrid/Abingdon Who we're after
As a dynamic, creative and enthusiastic leader, you will manage the councils' communications team, being chiefly responsible for co-ordinating and overseeing the councils' day-to-day communications activities.

You will use your extensive experience and knowledge to help the Communications and Engagement Manager craft the councils' communications strategies and plans, and will come up with exciting, creative, and new ideas to help the councils communicate more effectively.

In a high-profile role involved in much of the councils' most important and politically sensitive work, you'll be a reliable and dependable expert with the ability to very quickly 'cut through the noise' and pick out the important issues, advising senior managers and leading council members on matters of significance.

You will be a first-class communicator with exceptional writing skills and the ability to condense complex and challenging topics quickly into easy-to-read, punchy, conversational prose.

You'll be a strong manager with demonstrable experience in positively recruiting and mentoring team members to help them flourish in their roles.
Your ability to build strong relationships and collaborate with others will be crucial in this role.
Ultimately, you will play a vital role in helping the council to communicate effectively with its residents, stakeholders, and partners, and in promoting its work and achievements to a wider audience.
Main duties and responsibilities

Deliver strategic communications plans and activities.
Lead the councils' communications team, including overseeing workloads, managing performance, and ensuring the team meets its objectives
Helping to manage the councils' public reputation by generating high quality, creative communications and proactively overseeing media relations and positively handling media enquiries.
Enthusiastically building relationships with key stakeholders
Managing the councils' websites, ensuring they are up to date and accurate.
Overseeing the production of council publications, including newsletters.
Develop and deliver the councils' internal communications activities.
Hands on management of crisis communications, from small scale reputation matters to large scale emergency response communications.
Oversee and develop the councils' social media accounts and activities.
Keeping up to date with the latest communication trends and technologies to ensure the council's communication activities remain relevant and effective.
Your essential skills, knowledge and experience
- 5+ years' experience in a comparable communications/public relations role. - 3+ years' experience in line management.
Considerable experience providing communications advice to people in senior positions.
Your essential qualifications

Educated to degree level or equivalent.
If you have the following experience or qualifications - it's a bonus

Experience in a senior communications role in the public sector.
Local government experience

CIPR Professional PR Diploma or equivalent Your style and behaviours
A highly motivated, can do approach to communication.
Collaborative, engaging, creative, innovative, proactive, energetic.
A calm head in a crisis with highly robust personal resilience.

About us Our vision and values are important to the councils, and we expect you to support them and embed them in the way we work. Our vision We are seen as being customer-focussed, approachable and business-like. We are honest and open and are renowned for providing high-quality cost-effective services. Our values - We act with integrity and show respect - We are all accountable - We are passionate about our business - We strive for simplicity - We love success The benefits we offer ** - A basic 24 days annual leave per annum

Flexible working and annualised hours a flexible approach to work that our employees love
Salary pay awards
A generous career average pension scheme which includes life insurance of three times your salary
The opportunity to purchase a bike through Cyclescheme
A salary sacrifice car lease scheme a fully inclusive driving package for a fixed monthly cost
Various schemes to keep you healthy
We give you two days per year to volunteer within the local community