Health and Safety Manager

37 Hours per Week | Permanent

Point 33-35

Make safety practical. Give leaders confidence. Help protect everyone who learns and works here.

Good health and safety is not about adding more paperwork.

It is about having effective systems, understanding where the real risks are and giving people the confidence and capability to manage them well.

As our Health & Safety Compliance Manager, you'll have the opportunity to shape and strengthen how health and safety works across the College.

You'll act as our competent source of health and safety advice, developing and embedding practical management systems, helping managers take ownership of the risks in their areas and providing leaders and governors with clear assurance that our controls are working.

We're continuing to strengthen our health and safety arrangements, so we're looking for someone who can assess what we have, recognise what works, identify where we need to improve and turn that into sustainable change.

You'll work across a varied, multi-site estate and a wide range of activities, including classrooms, workshops, laboratories, construction environments, public spaces, contractors, events and new projects. The risks are different, so your approach will need to be practical, proportionate and grounded in how people actually work.

This isn't a role where health and safety sits with one specialist. Managers remain responsible for managing the risks in their areas. Your job is to give them the framework, knowledge, confidence, support and professional challenge to do that well.

Alongside developing our systems and people, you'll lead risk-based audits and assurance activity, investigate significant incidents, oversee key safety arrangements and ensure significant risks and actions remain visible and are followed through.

This role would suit an experienced health and safety professional who combines technical credibility with strong systems thinking, judgement and coaching skills. Someone who can constructively challenge at all levels, explain complex requirements simply and bring people with them as the organisation improves.

• Act as the College's competent source of health and safety advice, providing practical and authoritative advice to leaders, managers and employees.
• Develop, implement and continually improve the College's health and safety management framework, systems, policies and improvement plan.
• Assess the effectiveness of existing arrangements and establish clear priorities for improvement.
• Plan and deliver a proportionate, risk-based programme of audits, inspections and assurance activity.
• Coach managers to identify hazards, assess risk, implement effective controls and manage health and safety within their own areas.
• Support managers with higher-risk or unusual activities, identifying controls that are effective, practical and proportionate.
• Provide specialist advice across relevant workplace risks including COSHH, manual handling, PPE and display screen equipment.
• Investigate significant accidents, near misses and dangerous occurrences, identify root causes and ensure learning leads to improvement.
• Track significant findings and actions through to completion and escalate where risk is not being adequately controlled.
• Provide professional oversight of fire safety, first aid, evacuation, disabled evacuation and lockdown arrangements.
• Advise on contractor safety, construction activity, estates projects and the introduction of new equipment, processes and learning environments.
• Use our CAFM and other digital systems to improve compliance records, visibility of risk, action tracking and management information.
• Develop meaningful dashboards and assurance information so leaders and governors understand significant risks, trends and areas requiring attention.
• Work with HR and managers to identify competence and training needs and develop effective induction, training and refresher arrangements.
• Coordinate the Health and Safety Committee and build constructive relationships with colleagues, trade unions, consultants and external partners.
• Keep abreast of changes in legislation, regulation and good practice and translate these into practical action for the College.

You'll need:

• A recognised professional health and safety qualification, normally a NEBOSH Diploma or equivalent.
• Membership of a relevant professional body, or the ability to obtain appropriate membership.
• Significant professional health and safety experience within a complex organisation.
• Experience of developing, implementing and embedding health and safety management systems, not simply maintaining existing arrangements.
• Experience of assessing existing systems, identifying priorities and successfully implementing improvement.
• Strong experience of coaching, influencing and developing managers to understand and manage their own health and safety responsibilities.
• Experience of planning and carrying out risk-based audits, inspections and assurance activity.
• Experience of accident and incident investigation, including identifying underlying and root causes.
• Sound experience of risk assessment, safe systems of work, policy development, training and statutory reporting.
• The professional judgement to distinguish significant risk from lower-level issues and recommend proportionate action.
• The confidence to constructively challenge managers and leaders while maintaining positive working relationships.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to explain technical and legal matters clearly.
• Confidence using digital systems, data and dashboards to identify trends and demonstrate assurance.

Experience in further education, education, construction, public services or another complex regulated environment would be useful, but we're more interested in your ability to build effective systems, develop people and influence change.

What you're like

A systems thinker.

You look beyond individual incidents and ask whether responsibilities, processes, competence and controls are working as they should.

A coach. You develop managers' confidence and capability rather than creating dependency on the health and safety function

Practical. You turn legislation and professional standards into arrangements people can understand and use.

Proportionate. You put the greatest effort where the greatest risk lies and avoid unnecessary bureaucracy.

Independent. You give honest professional advice and constructive challenge, including when the message isn't easy.

Curious. You look beyond what happened to understand why it happened and what needs to change.

Clear. You translate complex risk, technical and legal information into advice that helps people make good decisions.

Credible. You can build trust with managers, senior leaders, employees, trade unions and technical specialists.

Persistent. You make sure significant actions don't disappear once the report has been written.

Collaborative. You work alongside managers to help them succeed while being clear that responsibility for operational risk remains with them.

A college is a fascinating and complex environment in which to lead health and safety.

Every day, people move between classrooms, workshops, laboratories, specialist facilities, public spaces and practical learning environments. Contractors work across our estate, projects change our buildings, new equipment and activities are introduced and thousands of people use our sites.

That makes this much more than a compliance role.

At Wigan & Leigh College, you'll have the opportunity to shape how health and safety works across the organisation. You'll help us develop stronger systems, increase management capability and create better visibility of risk and assurance.

You'll work closely with Estates, curriculum teams, HR, senior leaders, trade unions, contractors, consultants and governors, and your professional advice will influence decisions about our buildings, activities, projects and working practices.

If you enjoy building systems as much as checking them, developing people as much as advising them, and turning professional standards into practical everyday arrangements, we'd like to hear from you.

Essentials

• You’ll need to meet the current technical, occupational and assessor requirements of the certification body through which we deliver ACS.
• You’ll need current gas safety competence in the categories you’ll assess.
• You’ll need to complete any required assessor approval, observation and registration process before independently carrying out assessments.
• You’ll need to maintain the qualifications, certification and CPD required to remain approved.
• You’ll need an enhanced DBS check. If you get the job, we’ll do this for you.
• You’re committed to safeguarding and inclusion.

Great people. Change lives.

Time to recharge

• Generous annual leave entitlement, including bank holidays, depending on your role
• Family-friendly leave policies

Wellbeing as well as work

• 24/7 Employee Assistance Programme
• Medicash healthcare plan
• Occupational health support
• Confidential counselling
• Specsavers eye test vouchers
• A culture where people look out for each other

Financial peace of mind

• Local Government Pension Scheme
• Salary sacrifice schemes, including Cycle to Work and buy tech
• Railcard and Tusker Green Car Scheme
• Local and national discount schemes

Clear progression routes

• Ongoing professional development
• Opportunities to build experience across apprenticeships, employer engagement and learner support
• Opportunities to step up, specialise or move across college teams

Read more about our benefits.

Please complete our application form in full. We can’t accept CVs