Specialist Support Officer – Basildon Borough Council
Basildon, Essex
£18.20 PAYE / £23.31 Umbrella
Full-Time, Temporary – until end of December 2026
37 Hours per Week
Closing Date: Monday 20th July 2026
Essex County Council (ECC) are delighted to be supporting Basildon Council to recruit Specialist Support Officer on a full-time, temporary basis.
Due to the nature of this role, the successful candidate will be required to be onsite a minimum of 3 days per week.
Please note that the successful candidate will require a Standard DBS Check.
The Role
This post holder will be based within the Legal and Democracy Support Team, providing specialist high quality administrative and clerical support to legal and democracy. This role ensures the smooth operation of the department and supports the delivery of efficient and effective services.
This role has a specialist focus on Civic and member support, ensuring efficient and effective operations. The role involves providing high-quality support, liaising with the Major and Deputy major and member support. Coordinating meetings and facilitating communication within the team and with external stakeholders. There will also be involvement in managing systems which cross over between both legal and democratic services as well as on occasion requirements to support the wider team in busy periods which may relate directly to legal services.
There will be a requirement for this post holder to attend Mayoral events which may be outside of normal working hours; however, this will be limited to key annual events throughout the year
Accountabilities
- Provide specialist support and assistance for the day to day running of the Legal and Democracy service, including legal, democracy, member support, elections, information governance undertaking all activities as required and to be determined from time to time by the Support Supervisor and management team.
- Effective planning and diary management ensuring deadlines and time limits handled appropriately across the service.
- Management of relevant website pages and internal sites, service databases and contracts including mod.gov, and other relevant systems.
- Responsible for the logging, collating information and drafting initial responses for Freedom of Information, Subject Access requests, and complaints/CRMS, ensuring timely responses are available.
- Manage the arrangement and administration of internal meetings including those with relevant stakeholders and members
- To organise meetings and issue agendas. Take minutes and actions from meetings and work to ensure that all actions are undertaken according to required timescales.
- To provide where necessary efficient and effective administrative support to the Members of the Council which includes arrangements for Members to attend external training as required, and to provide post-election support to Members and the Committee, Member and Executive Services
- Coordination of the Mayor, Deputy Mayor, and Youth Mayor (when appropriate) attendance at a variety of events as part of their civic and ceremonial roles, corporate events such as Remembrance Day, Armed Forces Day and Commonwealth Day events, including travel arrangements, and draft preparation of speeches as required
The Experience You Will Bring
- Demonstrable experience of office administration, procedures and practice
- Experience of responding to enquiries in writing, face to face and on the telephone
- Experience of administration in one of the following areas, legal, local government, elections, democracy
- Experiences of communicating with varying audiences and levels within an organisation
Why choose Basildon Council?
Basildon Borough Council is one of the largest local authorities in the East of England region and serves a population of approximately 172,000 people. The town of Basildon is regarded as a key economic hub with the main areas of employment being engineering, research and development, distribution and financial services. Basildon is also the second biggest economy in the Thames Gateway, outside of Canary Wharf.
Working for Basildon Borough Council means making a practical and positive difference to the lives of people living and working in the Borough and provides a fulfilling career.
Each of our employees - whatever job role they are undertaking - can feel motivated by having a unique opportunity to use their skills to make Basildon a better place to live. Whether it is conserving our countryside, by regenerating our Borough, by housing our residents or by collecting the refuse on time.
Note: ECC are advertising this role on behalf of Basildon Council.
Basildon Borough Council is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and adults, and expects all employees, contractors and volunteers to share its commitment to prevent abuse, harm or exploitation.
The Council applies a robust recruitment vetting process. If you are successful you will need to undergo a Pre-employment Vetting Procedure.
What you should do next
If you are interested in finding out more about this role, we would love to hear from you. Please apply via Working for Essex website.
If you have queries on this role or would like to see a copy of the for Job Description, please email Ashleigh.Drake@essex.gov.uk