Contingency Assurance Officer

Job Description

Organisation: London Borough of Waltham Forest

Salary: PO7 £57,402 - £60,573

Contract Type: Full Time/Permanent

Working hours per week: 36

Application Deadline: 18/08/2026

Proposed Interview Date(s): Week Commencing 24/08/2026

Reference: 2252

About Us

Bursting with culture, energy, and opportunity, the London Borough of Waltham Forest is a fantastic and exciting place to work.

We are a highly ambitious borough. Driven by culture and the innate creativity of our residents, we have developed new and innovative ways to build our communities. Our Council is relentlessly resident-focused, insight-led, digitally driven and commercially minded; a Council focused on meeting the needs of our existing and future residents.

London Borough of Waltham Forest is one of the Mayor of London's Good Work Standard employers. This accreditation is a proof of our commitment to creating a healthy, fair and inclusive workplace. This includes fair pay and conditions, workplace well-being, skills and progression and diversity and recruitment.

The Council's preference is for online application. However, if you have a disability and are unable to complete an online application, please email so we can arrange an alternative application method.

About the role

You will play a key role in providing assurance of the council's preparedness, with responsibility for coordinating the annual training programme for the corporate crisis response team, including Gold, Silver and Bronze command roles, Resilience Advisors and Crisis Response Volunteers. This includes ensuring Corporate Management Team participation and compliance with annual refresher training requirements.

As part of the Council's corporate assurance arrangements, you will design and deliver a range of exercises, including live and tabletop scenarios, to test emergency planning and business continuity contingency plans at corporate, departmental and Borough Resilience Forum levels.

We are a Home Office-licensed sponsor; however, for this specific role we are not able to provide Skilled Worker visa sponsorship. To be considered, you must already hold a form of UK work authorisation that does not require sponsorship. >> Click here to download the Role Profile <<

Key Responsibilities

• Responsible for co-ordinating training of the corporate crisis response team across Gold, Silver, Bronze, Resilience Advisors and Crisis Response Volunteers, encompassing the corporate management team and ensuring that the training meets the yearly requirement of refresher training.
• To write exercises of various types, including live and tabletop, in order to test the contingency plans for emergency planning and business continuity corporately and departmentally at Waltham Forest Council at the statutory Borough Resilience Forum.
• To provide assistance to the Head of Service and Corporate Director in relation to emergency plans and providing assurance to directorate management teams, Senior Leadership Team (SLT) and producing reports on a regular basis in relation to resilience standards.
• To ensure that the team is measured against the 11 resilience standards as part of the London Resilience requirements and produce assurance reporting on behalf of the council and chief executive.
• Maintain the emergency planning team's resources and equipment at all levels of response including the Borough Emergency Control Centre, emergency communication channels and rest centre resources.
• To work with council departments, emergency services, and other category 1 and 2 responders, to assess risks and plan different types of exercises to test existing plans and developing risks.
• To maintain knowledge an understanding of the roles of emergency services, as well as changes in legislation or resilience related procedures.
• To work with the Service Manager to identify lessons learnt from incidents, both locally, regionally and nationally, to inform testing and exercising.
• To attend exercises and training with emergency services as an observer, to enable testing of plans to be joined up across multiple agencies.

Qualifications and Requirements

• Qualification or significant experience in Disaster Management, Emergency Planning or Business Continuity.
• Professional qualification directly related to the role and evidence of continued professional development.
• Extensive experience of emergency planning in a Local Authority including managing incidents in a Gold or Silver role with expert knowledge and understanding of the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, Emergency Planning, Crisis/emergency management and Business Continuity.
• Substantial proven experience of designing, writing and delivery testing and exercising of contingency plans.
• Detailed knowledge and understanding of emergency preparedness, multiagency response protocols, local, regional and national emergency plans, recovery protocols and business continuity.
• Possess detailed knowledge and understanding of emergency services and proven experience of working with those services.
• Maintaining up to date knowledge of civil contingency legislation, legal requirements and procedures at national, regional and local levels.
• To be able to use data to identify trends in risk, emergencies and use the results to drive future resilience strategies and activity.
• Demonstrable expertise in assessing the UK National Risk Register and London Risk Register to ensure testing and assurance align with council risks.
• Ability to work in partnership at a senior level with a wide range of staff groups, external agencies and voluntary organisations to make risk-based decisions on testing and exercising.
• Possess the knowledge and skills to be able to audit, prepare, test and exercise both emergency planning and business continuity plans, and take follow up action to enhance the resilience of the council.
• Ability to advise on preparation and maintenance of the Council's emergency plans, in conjunction with senior managers, including arrangements following service disruption and full recovery.
• Possess the skills to be able to design contingency exercises to test key responses across a range of standards under statutory requirements or protocols and to possess the skills to be able to assess emergency services responses.

Terms and conditions

The below terms and conditions apply to this role:

• Satisfactory employment references and CIFAS identity checks;
• Satisfactory declaration of interest;
• Satisfactory DBS check;
• Police Vetting
• As a public authority, we must ensure that members of staff in public-facing roles are able to speak fluent English. This means that they must have a command of spoken English, with confidence and accuracy, sufficient for the effective performance of their role. This requirement does not refer to any particular English language qualifications, regional or international accents, dialects, speech impediments or the tone of conversations. It does not require staff to speak only in English.

Equal Opportunity Employer

Waltham Forest is a diverse borough where diversity is valued and is integral to both, service delivery and employment of its staff. The Council is proud of its rich mix of communities and as the largest employer in the area, it works hard to respond to the changing needs of its population. We use our statutory duties on race, gender and disability equality and best practice in respect of age, faith and sexual orientation to ensure equality of opportunity in the workplace. The Council is committed to meeting its 4 equality objectives: - Promoting equality of opportunity - Opposing all forms of discrimination, intolerance and disadvantage - Ensuring our workforce reflects the diverse communities of Waltham Forest at all levels. - Providing fair, appropriate, accessible and excellent Services to all. Respecting Diversity is a core Council value.

To support the above and reduce the risk of bias in its recruitment activities, the council is operating an anonymous shortlisting process, which hides personal information that can identify individuals until their application has been considered for shortlisting. The council also operates a scheme whereby, for jobs graded up to and including scale SO2, internal candidates are considered first. This includes those candidates who self-identify as having a disability for the purposes of the Disability Confident scheme. For more information, please refer to our recruitment and selection policy.

We are keen to support employees to balance their working life with other commitments. Therefore, wherever possible, we will consider working arrangements that suit an individual's personal circumstances whilst still meeting the needs of the Council. If you would like to discuss the possible flexible working options that might be applicable to this role, please contact the person named below or feel free to discuss this during your interview.

Contact Information

If you have any questions about this vacancy or the application process, please contact Dan Lawson, Corporate Director Community Safety & Public Protection at

If you have any technical issues when trying to apply for this post, please contact our Recruitment Team via email at

The Council's preference is for online application. However, if you have a disability and are unable to complete an online application, please email so we can arrange an alternative application method.

Click here for further information on the Human Resources recruitment privacy notice.

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