Contract Support Officer

Job Title: Contract Support Officer
Starting Salary: £26,835 progressing to £30,060
Hours: 37
Location: Stevenage
Contract Type: Permanent
Directorate: Public Health

About the team

The Commissioning and Service Delivery Team consists of 16 colleagues with responsibility for commissioning a range of public health services from external and internal providers. We also provide the department with a project management function and are responsible for managing a wide range of transformational programmes.

About the role

We are looking for a Contract Support Officer to support the Public Health Contracts and Commissioning team and the wider department when engaging with contracted suppliers and service providers, particularly the effective recording and administration of contracts and other agreements with suppliers and partners.

Primary responsibilities of the role:

• Manage recording of contracts and agreements on HCC's public facing Contract Register and bespoke departmental systems.
• Co-ordinate updates to departmental and corporate registers and systems, e.g. contract status, and registering supplier details.
• Maintain records of contract modifications and variations
• Ensure files for contract and associated documents are maintained, and files uploaded to LiveLink as required.
• Track and record contracts with 300+ community pharmacy and GP providers, ensuring that provider competencies are recorded on relevant healthcare databases, and follow up on outstanding certificates.
• Analyse contracts records and report on range of contracts currently in place including supplier details, value, contracting periods, and risk scores.
• Support day-to-day processing of invoices, including scrutinising and querying claims for payment.

About you

Essential:

• An understanding of contracting processes, and the types and range of agreements used in local authorities.
• A methodical and diligent approach to recording contracts particularly on public-facing registers to support HCC's transparency requirements, and to recording supplier details as part of HCC's approach to reducing fraud.
• Experience in administering files and maintaining systems for recording.
• Ability to monitor the effectiveness of a new departmental system for contracts, and to recognising system issue and highlighting opportunities for further development.
• Experience as the go-to source of information and intelligence for this area.
• Organisational skills, particularly to monitor the status of contracts (preparation, completed etc) and to ensure associated documents are filed appropriately, highlighting issues and problems including forthcoming contract expiry dates.
• Basic analytical skills, and ability to use information to compile reports, presenting to relevant Public Health teams as required.
• Ability to develop and maintain effective and positive relationships with specialist teams in the Council, eg Commercial Law, Strategic Procurement, Insurance, Finance.
• Ability to recognise other teams' workflows and business processes, e.g. publishing procurement pipelines, and to identify how Public Health's contracting processes and systems can support these.
• Experience of developing and maintaining positive relationships with stakeholders
• Highly competent user of MS 365 and associated software packages.

Desirable:

• Experience of working within Public Health.
• Experience of working in a commissioning and contracts environment.
• Knowledge of the clinical interventions and services delivered by providers, and an understanding of the complex delivery landscape.

This job role is within the Corporate Services, level 7 job profile. Please locate this via:

Job profiles - Corporate services

To hear more about this opportunity please contact charlotte.allen@hertfordshire.gov.uk for an informal discussion about the role.

Interview Date: TBC

Please note that if we receive a high volume of applications, we may close the vacancy earlier than the advertised closing date. We encourage you to submit your application as soon as possible to ensure it is considered.

Benefits of working for us

How to apply

As part of your application, please upload your most recent CV. Ensure your CV is up to date with your employment history (including any employment gaps) and including any training/qualifications. We encourage you to include examples of where you have demonstrated the requirements/criteria in the advert / job profile to allow the panel to fully recognise your skills and abilities. You will have the opportunity to include a short covering paragraph within your application to give us a little more information about your skills, knowledge, and experiences.

Disability Confident
We are proud to be a Disability Confident employer and guarantee an interview to anyone disclosing a disability whose application meets the minimum criteria for the post.

English Fluency
The ability to converse at ease with members of the public and provide advice in accurate spoken English is essential for the post (for those whose language is a signed language the provision of a sign language interpreter who speaks English to the necessary standard of fluency will be required). Further information about the legal requirement can be found here.