Job Introduction
Job Title: Programme Manager - LGR
Hours: 37
Location: Hybrid
Contract Type: Two-year fixed term/secondment opportunity
Hertfordshire’s councils are undertaking one of the most significant transformation programmes in their history through Local Government Reorganisation (LGR).
This is a once‑in‑a‑generation opportunity to help design and implement brand‑new unitary authorities, reshaping how public services are delivered, how decisions are made, and how communities across the county experience local government for decades to come.
We are recruiting Programme Managers to play a pivotal role in the transition phase of this major change programme.
As a Programme Manager, you will take charge of the delivery of a full workstream — driving progress, shaping direction, and ensuring clarity and momentum at every stage. Working closely with the Workstream Co‑Chairs, you will help define sub‑workstreams, set priorities, and ensure teams are focused on what matters most for a safe and successful transition.
You’ll coordinate delivery boards, track progress against transition plans, and act as the primary link between the workstream and the wider programme. This includes working hand‑in‑hand with the central Delivery Unit, ensuring that plans, risks, reporting and readiness activities align with programme standards and expectations.
This is a unique chance to be at the forefront of a landmark transformation — influencing the design of new councils, shaping service models, and helping build the foundations for a modern, effective and resilient local government landscape.
If you’re motivated by meaningful change, thrive in complex environments, and want to help shape the future of local services in Hertfordshire, we’d love to hear from you.
About the role
- Oversee the delivery of a transition workstream, ensuring clear scope, direction and alignment with programme priorities and statutory milestones.
- Work closely with the Workstream Co‑Chairs to shape sub‑workstreams, define objectives, and maintain momentum across complex, multi‑council activity.
- Develop and maintain robust transition and implementation plans, ensuring dependencies, risks and activities are clearly captured and regularly updated.
- Coordinate workstream delivery boards and other key governance structures, driving focused discussion, ensuring actions are owned and progress is monitored
- Act as the primary liaison between the workstream and the central Delivery Unit, ensuring consistent application of programme standards across planning, RAID management, reporting and governance.
- Provide regular, high‑quality progress updates and status reports, drawing on evidence, data and assurance insights to inform programme‑level reporting.
- Support the mobilisation and coordination of wider workstream teams, ensuring roles, responsibilities and expectations are clearly understood.
- Ensure workstream‑level activity supports Day One readiness, surfacing any service continuity, legal, operational or resource risks early.
About you
- Experience in Programme delivery: Proven track record of overseeing complex programme delivery in fast‑paced, multi‑organisational environments, ensuring resources, governance, risks, and dependencies are effectively managed to enable successful outcomes
- Experience leading teams in ambiguous environments: Experience overseeing and motivating a team of professionals with a degree of diversity of activity
- Strong analytical skills: Able to interpret complex programme data, identify risks, trends, and resource pressures, and translate insights into clear, evidence‑based recommendations for senior decision‑makers
- Delivery planning expertise: Demonstrable experience building and managing integrated programme plans, controlling critical paths and milestones, and ensuring alignment to strategic priorities and resource capacity
- Stakeholder management: Demonstrable ability to build strong, trust‑based relationships across multiple councils, senior leaders, workstream leads, and external partners, alignment and maintaining clear, consistent communication
- Influencing and negotiation skills: to help shape decisions, gain support and align people who may have different priorities and perspectives.
We welcome applications from candidates who currently reside in the UK with established proof of right to work documentation. We are not able to offer sponsorship at this time for this role.
This job role is Level 13. Please locate the job profile here: Job profiles: Project & programme
To hear more about this opportunity please contact Anne Lowe - anne.lowe@watford.gov.uk & Anna Morrison - Anna.Morrison@hertfordshire.gov.uk for an informal discussion about the role.
How to apply
As part of your application, please upload your most recent CV. Ensure your CV is up to date with your employment history (including any employment gaps), and including any training/qualifications. We encourage you to include examples of where you have demonstrated the requirements/criteria in the advert / job profile to allow the panel to fully recognise your skills and abilities. You will have the opportunity to include a short covering paragraph within your application to give us a little more information about your skills, knowledge, and experiences.
Disability Confident
We are proud to be a Disability Confident employer and guarantee an interview to anyone disclosing a disability whose application meets the minimum criteria for the post.