Head of Building Control and Land Charges in Kettering

You will lead our recently restructured Building Control and Local Land Charges services. This is a unique opportunity to drive innovation, manage complex challenges, and oversee high-impact projects that will help define North Northamptonshire’s environment.

In this pivotal role, you’ll oversee strategic development and champion digital transformation across the service. You’ll work closely with the new Building Safety Regulator to ensure compliance and excellence in building safety standards.

Reporting directly to the Assistant Director of Regulatory Services, you’ll play a key role in shaping policy, improving service delivery, and building a forward-thinking team committed to quality and safety.

• Lead, motivate and develop the Building Control and Local Land Charges teams, fostering a culture of empowerment, trust, and high performance.
• Set the strategic direction for the service, ensuring alignment with council priorities and regulatory requirements.
• Be accountable for service performance, budgets, and delivery across:
• Ensure statutory duties are met, including those relating to Building Regulations (e.g. demolitions, dangerous structures, Initial Notices) and Local Land Charges (e.g. maintaining the register and meeting search turnaround targets).
• Promote and market the service to grow market share and maintain external quality accreditations.
• Manage financial and performance targets across operating costs, revenue, and capital budgets within the medium-term financial plan.

You’ll have excellent stakeholder management skills, with the ability to develop, influence and maintain good working relationships with a wide range of customers, stakeholders, and partners. You will have an innovative approach to problem solving, with the ability to drive service improvements and financial sustainability across the services.

You will bring extensive experience in Building Control and hold a degree or diploma in Building studies, civil or structural engineering or building surveying and full corporate membership of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, Chartered Institute of Building Engineers, Chartered Association of Building Engineers or similar Professional Institution Membership or equivalent demonstrable experience.

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 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.

We are proud to be a recognised Disability Confident Employer and are committed to providing an inclusive recruitment process and will offer an interview to disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria for the role. Our Employment and Disability Service provides bespoke support to individuals facing barriers to employment, helping them work towards their goals to start, stay and succeed in employment.

The council obtained the Gold status award for the Defence Employer Recognition Scheme (ERS).