Senior Licensing Officer

About Us:

Public Protection & Licensing in Westminster City Council is a world of extraordinary stories. Where people are passionate about keeping our streets safe and clean. 

Take Mohamad, a City Inspector who looks after the Little Venice ward. No two days are the same for Mohamad when he's out and about conducting ward inspections. He could be doing a licensing premises inspection one day and advising businesses and residents on the proper way to handle their waste on another. But before he joined Westminster, he used to work in banking, where he honed his skills in customer service and people management.

And those skills matters because, while he occasionally needs to enforce the law, his job is mostly about building strong relationships: educating businesses and residents about the impact of certain enviro-crimes.

One day he came across some unmarked commercial waste dumped on Edgware Road. Following procedures, he investigated this waste, carefully collecting evidence. Yet, despite his attempts to make contact with the commercial premises, the owners wouldn’t cooperate. Digging deeper, he worked collaboratively with different Westminster departments such as businesses rates and licensing, and discovered multiple businesses registered at the same address. After issuing six different notices, three of the business failed to comply and were successfully prosecuted.

So while Mohamad’s successfully swapped his financial know-how for expertise in local authority legislation, it’s his people skills and powers of persuasion he’s still proudest of.

The Role:

As a Senior Licensing Officer, you can make your own powerful contribution to ensuring that every resident, business, and visitor to Westminster experiences and thrives in a clean, safe, and quiet city. We want to enhance the lives of people and businesses in every corner of the council. Working within, and nurturing an integrated safe city directorate, you’ll work to deliver a culturally competent and inclusive workforce that identifies with and reflects our community.

As a council, we have a vision of maintaining a comprehensive licensing service. One that provides proper advice and guidance to applicants, internal officers, members, senior managers and external partners. One that not only processes the licenses and registration applications effectively and efficiently but takes care to manage and store documents properly.

And this all starts with you. By joining our team, you’ll be at the heart of implementing and developing a cohesive policy and strategy. On top of presenting cases at Licensing Officer Panels and Licensing Sub Committees as well as attending public meetings and ensuring compliance though education, you’ll be responsible for monitoring, analysing and managing our delegated budgets and funding.

By doing the basics right, we’re able to prepare correspondence, write reports, attend hearings and represent the council with a library of relevant knowledge that makes us the trusted experts.

About You:

Meticulous, diligent, and influential, your attention to detail will be paramount to your success. As you negotiate with internal and external stakeholders, your people skills will come in handy as you investigate, analyse and provide solutions. With the ability to understand and explain complex legislation you’ll be comfortable working as part of a team but also solo.

With relevant skills and experience using databases within an administrative or customer service environment, you’ll be adept when dealing with enquiries and communications from the public. This experience should extend to include a range of public protection and licensing legislation and you’ll have a firm knowledge of the various types of licensing regimes.

This demonstrable experience will be paired with excellent written and verbal communication and competence with technology. This is a collaborative role. One that’ll require you to be assertive and tactful as well as confident when leading a team to efficiently complete and prioritise work.

Closing date:  24 November 2024

Contact details for an Informal Discussion: Steven Rowe, Team Leader, via email: SROWE@WESTMINSTER.GOV.UK

What We Offer:

Westminster is an amazing place. We are home to more than 200,000 residents from all backgrounds, over 50,000 vibrant and vital businesses and three-quarters-of-a-million people work in Westminster. Westminster City Council’s strategy is to work towards a Fairer Westminster. A Fairer Westminster is one in which our communities are at the heart of our decision-making and help to determine the city’s future. By working directly with our communities and other partners, we can build a more inclusive city that celebrates our diverse communities, and where residents, workers and visitors from all backgrounds will feel welcome and safe.  

At Westminster City Council, we pride ourselves on being an inclusive workplace and employer of choice. We encourage and welcome applications from people from all backgrounds and aim to have a workforce that, at all levels, represents the communities we serve. We champion equality, diversity, inclusion and wellbeing and aim to create a workplace where everyone feels valued, has a sense of belonging and is empowered to be their best.

As a forward-thinking Council we appreciate that people work in different ways, therefore our staff benefit from working a range of flexible working patterns as well as Agile working. 

The Council is a Disability Confident Employer. If you have declared a disability in your application, we guarantee an interview if you meet the essential criteria of the job. If you are invited for interview, you will be asked if you need any reasonable adjustments in order to attend, and we will make these wherever possible.