Clerical/Executive Officer

Brook Street; Bristol; Hybrid; GBP 100,000 - 125,000; Full time

Job summary

A recruitment agency is seeking a Sustainability Support Officer for a public sector role based in Bristol. The position requires excellent customer service skills and a strong administrative background. Responsibilities include providing support across teams, overseeing financial transactions, and ensuring effective communication within the department. This temporary role offers up to £14.86 per hour, and it is office-based for training, transitioning to a hybrid model later.

Benefits

Paid holidays

Pension scheme

Training opportunities

Qualifications

• Excellent customer service skills and confident at all levels.
• Ability to work independently and as part of a team.
• Effective time management and working to tight deadlines.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Computer literacy in Microsoft Office applications, particularly Excel.

Responsibilities

• Provide admin support services across teams.
• Oversee financial support and maintain purchase orders.
• Deliver secretariat service to cross-Defra forums.
• Arrange meetings, take minutes, and summarize action points.
• Prepare transparency datasets for publication on GOV.UK.
• Monitor team mailboxes and calendars.

Job description

Up to £14.86 per hour + Paid holidays and pension scheme

Temporary Public Sector Administration Role suitable for someone with a secretarial background and a passion for excellent customer service.

Temporary contract till the end of March 2026, or for 7 months from start date to cover maternity leave.

Passionate about providing excellent customer service? Brook Street are currently recruiting for a Sustainability Support Officer, Executive Officer level, to work for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, DEFRA, based in either Bristol, Newcastle Upon Tyne or York.

Full-time role working 37 hours per week, Monday-Friday, 9 - 5, can be flexible to a certain degree.

Office based for the training, then moving on to 3 days a week in the office. This could increase, as required, for further training or if the business needs dictates.

Possible travel between sites on a few occasions.

No parking on any of the sites.

Location- Lancaster House, Newcastle Upon Tyne, Horizon House, Bristol or Foss House, York
Rate of pay £14.86/hr
Temporary contract till end of March 2026

About The Role:
This role sits within the Defra group Sustainability Centre of Expertise, which provides services across Defra group's 34 organisations. The team provides a range of essential services. This includes Setting, developing, maintaining and overseeing the implementation of the Defra group sustainability strategy.

This role will provide admin support services across the teams ensuring that they are able to react and respond to changes affecting the function quickly and efficiently.

Main responsibilities will include but not be limited to:

• Providing business support along with general administration tasks
• Overseeing financial support, having oversight of purchase orders (POs) and other transactions
• Raising purchase order requests with the appropriate team, raise and track progress to completion
• Maintaining and improving their intranet and Sustainability Hub information
• Delivering the secretariat service to several cross-Defra and cross-Government forums, such as the Sustainability Leadership Group and the Government Chief Sustainability Officers' Group.
• Creating agendas and pulling the items together
• Arranging meetings, minute taking, summarising of the meetings and dealing with the action points
• Collection and analysing of data
• Some travel to other sites possible, once every 3 to 4 months
• Under the government's transparency agenda, prepare various transparency data sets for first review and liaise with stakeholders and customers to resolve any queries and discrepancies, ready for publication on GOV.UK
• Monitoring team mailboxes and calendars as well as allocate queries appropriately
• Providing limited Personal Assistant support to the Head of Sustainability Culture and Reporting team

Skills Required:

• Excellent customer service, confident to operate at all levels and be able to escalate to senior colleagues, where appropriate
• Be able to work independently and as part of a team
• Effective time management, with experience of working to tight deadlines
• Excellent written and verbal skills
• Computer literate in Microsoft suite applications, such as Excel, Word and PowerPoint
• Attention to detail and use own initiative
• Data entry and analysis - extracting data from reports

Full training will given but you must have full working knowledge of Microsoft products, especially Excel.

Candidates applying must be able to pass a clear Basic DBS check and provide proof of Right to Work in the UK. You will also need to provide either reference details and/or evidence for education etc for the last 3 years.

The interviews will take place via Teams and you will be expected to demonstrate how your skills match those required and answer one or two competency-based questions, see behaviours below.

Behaviours

• Seeing the Big Picture
• Communicating and Influencing
• Managing a Quality Service
• Working Together

So, if you are looking for a glimpse into the world of the Public Sector, then this could be the opportunity for you.

Please apply online with your current CV in WORD format. Due to the high number of applications we receive it may not be possible to respond to all applications

Brook Street is proud to support the Armed Forces Covenant and as such, we guarantee to interview all candidates who are veterans or spouses/partners of military personnel, and who meet all the essential criteria for the vacancy.

As a Disability Confident Leader, and holder of the Gold Award status from the Defence Employer Recognition Scheme, Brook Street, as a supplier to the Public Sector Resourcing Framework (PSR), will offer you a guaranteed interview with a PSR Sourcer.

Should you identify as a candidate with a disability and/or as a veteran or spouse/partner of military personnel and meet all the essential criteria for the role, we encourage you to reach out to us via the Brook Street website. Here you will find a link to register your interest and state the role that you are interested in. We are committed to engaging with you.

In cases where we have a high volume of ex-military candidates/military spouses/partners, who meet all of the essential criteria, Brook Street will interview the best candidates from within that group.

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