Project Manager

Surrey County Council; Woking; On-site; GBP 48,000; Full time

Job summary

A local government authority in Woking is seeking a Project Manager to join the CFLL Transformation Team. This role involves delivering projects that enhance Children's Social Care, ensuring effective stakeholder management and meeting project objectives. The position offers a starting salary of £47,142 per annum, with additional benefits including generous leave and an employee assistance programme. Ideal for those with strong project management skills and a passion for improving community outcomes.

Benefits

26 days' holiday increasing with service

Option to buy up to 10 additional days of leave

Generous pension scheme

Carer's leave

Employee Assistance Programme

Wellbeing discounts

Qualifications

• Degree qualified or significant vocational experience in project roles.
• Knowledge of business planning and financial management practices.
• Proven ability to manage projects through to completion.

Responsibilities

• Support priority programmes within the CFLL transformation team.
• Oversee end-to-end delivery of assigned projects.
• Engage with stakeholders throughout the project lifecycle.

Skills

Project management skills

Stakeholder management

Problem solving skills

Initiative

Education

Degree or significant vocational experience

Job description

• Category: Care - Children and Young People
• Contract type: Fixed term
• Working hours: 36 hours per week
• Posted on: 6 November 2025
• Location: Victoria Gate, Chobham Road, Woking GU21 6JD

Description

This fixed term role until 31 March 2027 has a starting salary of £47,142 per annum, based on a 36 hour working week.

We are looking for an experienced Project Manager to join our CFLL Transformation Team and play a key role in delivering priority programmes that drive meaningful change.

Our Offer to You

• 26 days' holiday, rising to 28 days after 2 years' service and 31 days after 5 years' service
• Optionto buy up to 10 days ofadditionalannual leave
• A generous local government salary related pension
• Up to 5 days of carer's leave and 2 paid volunteering days per year
• Paternity,adoptionand dependents leave
• An Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) to support health and wellbeing
• Learning and development hub where you can access a wealth of resources
• Wellbeing and lifestyle discounts including gym, travel, and shopping
• A chance to make a real difference to the lives of our residents

About The Role

As a Project Manager you will support the priority programmes within the CFLL transformation team. For Children's Social Care transformation, our priority is ensuring that we are working with our partners to intervene at the earliest opportunity to prevent escalation of need and where it is appropriate for a child to come into our care, that we have suitable residential and fostering placements within Surrey.

You will deliver an effective project management role for a high profile review of Surreys fostering services. This will include overseeing the end-to-end delivery of assigned projects, ensuring they are completed on time, within scope, and in line with the Council's transformation objectives. It will include tracking project progress, ensuring milestones are met and providing regular updates to senior leadership and stakeholders on performance, risks, and issues. It will also include managing a wide range of internal and external stakeholders, ensuring their ongoing support and involvement throughout the project lifecycle. You will be experienced in developing and maintaining comprehensive project documentation, including plans, schedules, and status reports, ensuring accuracy and alignment with project goals.

The role provides an opportunity to support the Corporate Parenting Programme to deliver its ambitious objectives to improve outcomes for looked after children in Surrey by; increasing the number of in-house foster carers in Surrey for children, improving the effective utilisation of existing foster carers and ensuring an improvement in the retention of foster carers, so that children can remain within Surrey and retain effective links with family and friends and their existing networks.

This is the perfect opportunity for someone with strong project management skills to get involved in this exciting and fast moving project.

Your Application

In order to be considered for shortlisting, your application will clearly evidence the following skills and align with our behaviours :

• Degree qualified, or significant vocational experience demonstrating development through involvement in a series of progressively more demanding relevant work/roles.
• Knowledge of principles, practices, policies and procedures relating to business planning and financial and organisational management.
• Proven problem solving skills and the ability to exercise high levels of initiative to develop, devise and implement workable solutions.
• Proven ability to manage a range of projects through to completion.

Satisfactory DBS clearance is required for this role and must be able to travel across the county to attend stakeholder meetings.

To apply, we request that you submit a CV and you will be asked the following 4 questions:

• Describe your experience in successfully delivering a complex project to time and to budget. What issues or risks did you experience and how did you over come these.
• Can you provide an example of when you developed and delivered an effective approach to stakeholder management within a project.
• Please tell us about a time you managed multiple competing deadlines in order to ensure the success of a project. What did you find particularly challenging and how did you address this?
• Please tell us about a project that you led that had a demonstrable impact and why? Please set out the approach you took to be able to evidence this impact.

Before submitting your application, we recommend you read the job description & OurLife at Surrey handbook to get an insight into working at Surrey.

The job advert closes at 23:59 on 4th December 2025 with interviews planned to follow.

Contact Us

Please contact Helen Kay, Senior Programme Manager, [e-mail] for any questions relating to the role. This could be to discuss flexible working requests, transferable skills or any barriers to employment.

Local Government Reorganisation (LGR)

Surrey County Council is undergoing Local Government Reorganisation, moving from a two-tier system to two new unitary councils in April 2027. If you are employed by Surrey on 1st April 2027, your role will transfer with current terms and conditions to one of the new organisations, supporting local devolution and greater powers for our communities.

We are a disability confident employer which means if you have shared a disability on your application form and have evidenced you meet the minimum criteria, we guarantee you an interview.

Your skills and experience truly matter to us. From application to your first day, we're committed to supporting you with any adjustments you need, we value inclusion and warmly welcome you to join and help build a workplace where everyone belongs.