Interim Head of Traded Services to Schools

THE CLIENT

Our client is a London Borough which currently offers a range of traded services for local schools and academies, generating annual income of around £8million.

In order to meet significant financial challenges and budget reductions, the Council expects to strengthen and extend its traded services offer in order to achieve a significant increase in traded income. However there is currently little dedicated or specialist capacity to support the development and management of traded services.

THE ASSIGNMENT

The Council is therefore establishing a new Head of Traded Services position in its Children Services Directorate in order to meet this challenge. The post-holder will need to establish and run a business-focused traded services unit to plan, deliver and co-ordinate an improved traded offer for schools, which will also include pooled and de-delegated funded services.

The Council plans to recruit and appoint a permanent member of staff to this position, but requires an interim manager to take on the role in the short term. In particular, candidates are expected to have:

- Experience of income generation within the education sector and the ability to set up and run a successful traded services unit.
- Excellent customer service skills and the ability to rapidly establish successful relationships with schools and academies.
- Highly developed negotiation and influencing skills.
- A track record of successful operational leadership and management of high quality services.

THE INTERIM MANAGER

We are specifically interested in applications from interim managers who meet the following criteria:

- A proven track record of establishing traded services with schools in a Local Authority context. Ideally this would include the end to end process of establishing business cases through to delivering income streams with schools.
- Prior experience does not need to be in Local Government, indeed previous commercial experience could well be an advantage, but no prior experience of setting up traded services in a Local Authority context would be a disadvantage.
- Immediately available - the client needs an interim manager to start in early January, up to 5 days per week.