London Borough of Waltham Forest
Head of Civil Contingencies & CCTV Operations
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Organisation: London Borough of Waltham Forest
Salary: PO12 - £79,119 - £85,677
Contract Type: Full-time/Permanent
Working hours per week: 36
Application Deadline: 18/08/2026
Proposed Interview Date(s): Week Commencing 24/08/2026
Reference: 2251
About Us
Bursting with culture, energy, and opportunity, the London Borough of Waltham Forest is a fantastic and exciting place to work. We are a highly ambitious borough. Driven by culture and the innate creativity of our residents, we have developed new and innovative ways to build our communities. Our Council is relentlessly resident-focused, insight-led, digitally driven and commercially minded; a Council focused on meeting the needs of our existing and future residents. London Borough of Waltham Forest is one of the Mayor of London’s Good Work Standard employers. This accreditation is a proof of our commitment to creating a healthy, fair and inclusive workplace. This includes fair pay and conditions, workplace well-being, skills and progression and diversity and recruitment.
The Council’s preference is for online application. However, if you have a disability and are unable to complete an online application, please email recruitment@walthamforest.gov.uk so we can arrange an alternative application method.
About the Role
You will lead, plan, develop and deliver an expert professional service within Waltham Forest.
Providing expert leadership on the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, ensuring the Council’s Emergency Planning and Business Continuity arrangements are robust, compliant and effectively delivered in line with London Resilience standards, ISO 22301 and BCI Good Practice Guidelines.
Being the corporate lead in providing strategic oversight of the CCTV network and infrastructure, ensuring that relevant legislation, guidance and best practice is compliant and is correctly applied across the council, and to advise staff on the appropriate use of this legislation.
We are a Home Office–licensed sponsor; however, for this specific role we are not able to provide Skilled Worker visa sponsorship. To be considered, you must already hold a form of UK work authorisation that does not require sponsorship.
[Click here to download the Role Profile](https://fs-filestore-eu.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/Waltham_Forest/govRoleProfiles/Role Profile - Head of Civil Contingencies & CCTV Operations - 2251.pdf)
Key Responsibilities
- To provide strategic advice to senior leaders and elected members on resilience, emergency planning, business continuity and multi agency frameworks.
- To provide assurance on corporate preparedness by delivering regular assessed and maintained plans and reports of effective emergency response at both local and corporate levels, evidenced through testing and exercising.
- To provide strategic oversight of the Borough and Community Risk Registers, ensuring they are maintained in line with the National Risk Register of Civil Emergencies and integrated with corporate risk assessments.
- To lead the Protect and Prepare strands of Counter Terrorism, embedding Martyn’s Law (the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025) including advising on protective security measures.
- To lead the partnership with key stakeholders in the Police, Security Services, and National Crime Agency, providing high level support, and ensuring that with the Home Office and/or the Biometric & Surveillance Camera Commissioner there is a coordinated approach to the provision and use of CCTV.
- Responsible for an operational budget of approximately £5m and Individual project spends varying up to £1m in value.
- Postholder will directly manage 3 managers (CCTV Manager, Civil Contingency Manager and Business Continuity Manager) and deputise for Assistant Director Public Protection & Resilience.
- The postholder will directly manage up to 100 staff during incidents and emergency response situations and work with Senior Management Team for the recruitment, retention, and training of staff who will respond to an emergency incident.
- The postholder will oversee the CCTV maintenance contract, and systems contract, overseeing and managing consultants and suppliers.
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Qualifications and Requirements
- Educated to degree level in a field relevant to the role.
- Professional qualification directly related to the role and evidence of continued professional development.
- Expert knowledge of civil contingencies and principles of integrated emergency management including duties and obligations placed on local authorities through legislation, acts and guidance.
- Ability to be on call as the council’s resilience advisor and to be prepared to respond to major incidents at very short notice.
- To be able to advise the council on new developments in technology and providing advice to council departments and contracted services, on CCTV installations, upgrades, DPIAs and CCTV requests.
- Possess a flexible approach to new or emerging challenges affecting community safety and resilience and to be able to work with others to mitigate against potential new threats
- Ability to advise on the preparation and maintenance of the Council’s directorate and divisional business continuity plans, in conjunction with senior managers, including arrangements for interim arrangements following service disruption and full recovery of operations
- Proven experience of working in the field of emergency planning/resilience/civil protection.
- Substantial experience and knowledge in the delivery of emergency planning and business continuity functions including experience of incident management, detailed knowledge and understanding of emergency preparedness, multiagency crisis response protocols, local, regional and national emergency plans, recovery protocols and business continuity management
- Experience of senior roles in an emergency response setting at silver (tactical) and gold (strategic) levels.
- Experience of working with / leading stakeholders through complex problem solving and strategy definition
- Substantial experience of working closely with other agencies, stakeholders and partners, including a range of Police teams, including those which may require confidentiality and/or security restricted activity.
- Experience in managing a team of specialist officers within complex organisations.
Terms and Conditions
The below terms and conditions apply to this role:
- Satisfactory employment references and CIFAS identity checks;
- Satisfactory declaration of interest;
- Satisfactory DBS check;
- Police Vetting
- As a public authority, we must ensure that members of staff in public-facing roles are able to speak fluent English. This means that they must have a command of spoken English, with confidence and accuracy, sufficient for the effective performance of their role. This requirement does not refer to any particular English language qualifications, regional or international accents, dialects, speech impediments or the tone of conversations. It does not require staff to speak only in English.
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How to Apply
Interested candidates are invited to submit their applications online by pressing the ‘Apply’ button below. This includes a supporting statement that outlines to us how your skills and experience make you a good candidate for this vacancy.
We reserve the right to close this vacancy early if we receive sufficient applications for the role. Therefore, if you are interested, please submit your application as early as possible.
Equal Opportunity Employer
Waltham Forest is a diverse borough where diversity is valued and is integral to both, service delivery and employment of its staff. The Council is proud of its rich mix of communities and as the largest employer in the area, it works hard to respond to the changing needs of its population. We use our statutory duties on race, gender and disability equality and best practice in respect of age, faith and sexual orientation to ensure equality of opportunity in the workplace. The Council is committed to meeting its 4 equality objectives: - Promoting equality of opportunity - Opposing all forms of discrimination, intolerance and disadvantage - Ensuring our workforce reflects the diverse communities of Waltham Forest at all levels. - Providing fair, appropriate, accessible and excellent Services to all. Respecting Diversity is a core Council value.
To support the above and reduce the risk of bias in its recruitment activities, the council is operating an anonymous shortlisting process, which hides personal information that can identify individuals until their application has been considered for shortlisting. The council also operates a scheme whereby, for jobs graded up to and including scale SO2, internal candidates are considered first. This includes those candidates who self-identify as having a disability for the purposes of the Disability Confident scheme. For more information, please refer to our recruitment and selection policy.
We are keen to support employees to balance their working life with other commitments. Therefore, wherever possible, we will consider working arrangements that suit an individual's personal circumstances whilst still meeting the needs of the Council. If you would like to discuss the possible flexible working options that might be applicable to this role, please contact the person named below or feel free to discuss this during your interview.
For more information on the benefits of working for the Council, please visit https://www.walthamforest.gov.uk/jobs-and-training/find-jobs-and-other-opportunities/working-us.
Contact Information
If you have any questions about this vacancy or the application process, please contact Dan Lawson, Corporate Director Community Safety & Public Protection at Daniel.Lawson@walthamforest.gov.uk.
If you have any technical issues when trying to apply for this post, please contact our Recruitment Team via email at recruitment@walthamforest.gov.uk.
Click here for further information on the Human Resources recruitment privacy notice.
Fraud Awareness Notice
The London Borough of Waltham Forest only advertises vacancies via our official website and approved recruitment platforms (e.g. Jobsgopublic).
We will never ask for payment or request sensitive personal or financial information as part of our recruitment process.
If you are contacted by a third party claiming to represent the Council, please verify the vacancy via our official
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