SEMD Protective Security Manager in Havant

We’re making a difference: Together, we can ensure that there is enough water for everyone, now and in the future. Portsmouth Water are delighted to have an opening for an SEMD Protective Security Manager to join the team.

In this role, you will be responsible for leading the Security team and ensuring the business remains protected against all security threats (physical, cyber, personnel, and information security risks), while maintaining compliance with SEMD regulatory requirements. You will lead the organisation’s protective security arrangements, ensuring robust controls, processes, and culture are in place to safeguard critical assets, people and information. You will also play a crucial role in incident management, ensuring security incidents are responded to effectively through close collaboration with internal teams, regulators, emergency services and other stakeholders. By identifying lessons learned and embedding continuous improvements across the business, you will help strengthen the organisational resilience and support Portsmouth Water in delivering a secure and reliable service to customers and communities.

What will you be doing? Key Responsibilities

• Responsible for Emergency Planning and Protective Security (physical, cyber, personnel and information) across Portsmouth Water, ensuring regulatory compliance, effective incident management and continuous improvement.
• Act as a senior member of the Incident Management Team (IMT), coordinating incident response and recovery with internal teams and external stakeholders.
• Build and maintain key relationships with internal leaders, Intelligence Agencies, Specialist Police Units, Local Resilience Forums, DEFRA, DWI and other regulators.
• Provide expert emergency planning and security advice, ensuring alignment with legislation, policies, standards and best practice.
• Manage emergency planning and security risk assessments, registers and action plans, tracking compliance and driving improvements against regulatory requirements.
• Oversee SEMD (physical security) and eCAF (cyber security) reporting, ensuring accurate compliance monitoring and annual regulatory reporting.
• Develop, implement and monitor improvement plans to achieve and maintain compliance, reporting progress through appropriate governance channels.
• Lead the development, standardisation and continuous improvement of emergency planning and security policies, procedures and audit readiness across the business.
• Produce reports, briefings and updates for internal and external stakeholders.
• Plan, deliver and evaluate exercises and testing programmes to ensure people, systems, plans and procedures remain effective and compliant.

What do you need? Skills, Qualifications & Competencies

• Strong analytical and logical mindset for continuous improvement.
• Demonstrate leadership qualities including strong collaboration and clear communication skills.
• Well developed stakeholder management skills, internally up to Executive and Board level and externally with senior regulators and local public bodies.
• Self-motivated, committed and organised to manage own workload and react to changing priorities.
• Comfortable with representing Portsmouth Water in the wider water industry and security industry forums.
• Strong IT skills, including MS Office 360 products.
• Experience of working in a regulated environment e.g. utilities, Government departments, national infrastructure etc.

We recognise people want to work in a variety of different ways, and that’s why we’re happy to consider flexible working arrangements. Please feel free to talk to us at interview about the flexibility you may be looking for.

Please note, we may close this advert early if we receive a high volume of applications — so we encourage you to apply as soon as possible to avoid missing out.

We’re committed to equality, diversity and inclusion, and we actively encourage applications from all sections of society.

Please be aware, the Company has a responsibility to ensure that all employees are eligible to live and work in the UK. Due to the high volume of applications we may receive, we’re unable to respond to every applicant individually. If your application is of interest, we’ll usually be in touch within 4 weeks of receiving it.

What can Portsmouth Water offer you?

At Portsmouth Water, we believe in rewarding our people. Here’s just a taste of what’s waiting for you when you join the team: Holidays Made Better Enjoy 27 days of annual leave, plus...