Commissioning Manager in Kettering

We have an exciting three-year fixed-term contract opportunity for an experienced Commissioning Manager to play a leading role in delivering North Northamptonshire's Family Hubs Transformation Programme. This role will be central to shaping and embedding the Family Hubs model, ensuring services are joined-up, accessible, and responsive to the needs of children, young people, and families. You will commission high-quality, evidence-based, and cost-effective services across key strands of the transformation, including:

• Parenting support
• The home learning environment
• Infant feeding
• Perinatal mental health and parent–infant relationships

You will bring advanced knowledge of commissioning, co-production, and monitoring and evaluation, alongside strong skills in community engagement, partnership working, and stakeholder management. Working collaboratively with providers, colleagues, and partners, you will oversee provider performance, manage micro-tenders and grants, and ensure services deliver real impact for local communities. This is a hybrid role, with a base at NN16 8TL in Kettering. The successful applicant will need to travel across North Northamptonshire, as and when required.

If you would like to discuss this opportunity in more detail, please contact Sorayah Mbuthia, Interim Family Hubs Strategic Commissioner, at Sorayah.mbuthia@northnorthants.gov.uk

Principal responsibilities

1. The postholder will lead the development of comprehensive and, where appropriate, integrated commissioning strategies to achieve the best possible outcomes for the population and vulnerable groups within available resources, compliant with legislation and in line with the national and local strategic direction, and fully informed by involvement and co-production with customers and service users.
2. Within the service areas and service user groups of public health and wellbeing, the postholder will oversee a diverse network of providers, managing a high volume of micro-tenders and small grant arrangements to secure value for money and deliver measurable outcomes.
3. The postholder will be responsible for developing and maintaining high quality partnerships with stakeholders including the voluntary sector, health, housing and independent sector organisations in order to meet the needs of the population.
4. The postholder will be responsible for the procurement of new and revised support and services, including working with public health colleagues to support the development of service specifications, documentation for re-tender and maintaining a lead role in PH for all tender processes.
5. The postholder will be required to utilise their specialist skills and knowledge collaboratively with practitioners, clinicians, service users, procurement, legal advisors, public health and commissioning team colleagues to ensure that contracts accurately reflect service requirements.
6. The postholder will take the lead in ensuring best value for money for the Council by developing, commissioning and monitoring good quality but cost effective services, for example by developing transparent service provider pricing, agreeing outcome focused contracts, re-negotiating existing arrangements, leading the recommissioning of poor value services and developing business cases for new investments, ensuring that services are delivered within budget.
7. The postholder will be required to ensure that services and contracts remain compliant within local and national standards and legislative changes both relating to local authority procurement and to the standards and expectations of service areas.
8. The postholder will intervene where contracted services fall below required performance measures by working with PH lead officers to support the service to comply with the required standard and/or renegotiate terms and conditions or decommissioning the contract and re-tendering, exercising their professional judgement relating to the levels of risk within the service and its capacity to improve.

About you

Education, Qualifications and Training

Essential Criteria

• Evidence of education to degree level or equivalent
• A professional qualification relating to commissioning, public health, health or social care or evidence of wide-ranging knowledge about the legislation, national strategy and needs of public health provided services gained through substantial practitioner experience

Experience and Knowledge

Essential Criteria

• A thorough understanding of commissioning and procurement
• Demonstration of direct responsibilities for budgets, service delivery and people management.
• Recent, proven experience of effective inter-agency working.
• Experience of effective project management.
• Understanding of departmental usage of information systems and aptitude to utilise information technology.
• Numerate and literate – able to develop costed business cases and to draft papers for different audiences.

Desirable Criteria

• Experience of sexual health and/or 0 – 19 commissioning

Ability and Skills

Essential Criteria

• An ability to commission new and innovative services e.g. in accordance with new government policies and requirements
• Able to effectively manage significant budgets within financial constraints and regulations
• Good organisational and problem-solving skills
• Articulate and able to communicate well both orally and in writing
• Report writing and verbal reasoning ability sufficient to write and present reports including Cabinet and Scrutiny Committee reports and to draft service specifications
• Able to demonstrate reliability and ability to deliver to deadlines
• Ability to work on own initiative, seeking advice when appropriate
• Demonstrate ability to travel effectively to different locations

Desirable Criteria

• Experience of finance and financial systems

Equal Opportunities

Ability to demonstrate awareness/understanding of equal opportunities and other people's behaviour, physical, social and welfare needs.

Additional Factors

Able to demonstrate a clear understanding and commitment to health and Safety and a willingness to undertake training to enable implementation of procedures.

Our benefits

Here at North Northamptonshire Council, we’re transforming for the better, using all our creativity and imagination to create the best life for our local people. You’ll find that we have a wide range of careers that may be more surprising than you think! We offer a vibrant working environment with:

• a competitive salary
• a pension scheme, where we pay a significant contribution on top of your contribution. It provides life cover and ill-health protection.
• lots of opportunities to develop your skills, knowledge and potential in a large unitary council
• generous leave entitlement (28 days, rising to 33 days) and bank holidays, plus the option to buy up to an extra 10 days
• hybrid and flexible working arrangements, where practicable for service needs to help you with a healthy work-life balance.

We provide a range of great benefits such as an Employee Assistance Programme, an Employee Benefits Scheme, wellbeing support, travel rates at HMRC rates, as well as supporting a range of active Employee Network Groups.

Our Values and Behaviours

Our values define who we are and how we operate, by forming the foundation for how we interact with our customers, colleagues and provide our services. They are also at the forefront of our decision making and delivery and are: Customer-focused, Respectful, Efficient, Supportive, Trustworthy.