Senior People Consultant (Schools HR)

This role has a starting salary of £47,142 per annum for working 36 hours per week.

We are excited to be recruiting a Senior People Consultant to join our fantastic team based at Woodhatch Place, Reigate.

Our Offer to You

• 26 days' holiday, rising to 28 days after 2 years' service and 31 days after 5 years' service (prorated for part time staff)
• Option to buy up to 10 days of additional annual leave
• A generous local government salary related pension
• Up to 5 days of carer's leave and 2 paid volunteering days per year
• Paternity, adoption and 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

This is not a typical local authority HR post. If you're ready for your next step as a Senior HR Consultant within the education sector, this unique and dynamic position offers the opportunity to make a meaningful impact on Surrey's schools. You will play a central role in supporting schools through complex and challenging employment situations, working closely with school leaders, education colleagues and partners across the Council. These strong, collaborative relationships create a dynamic and rewarding environment in which your professional expertise will genuinely make a difference.

The role reports into the People Business Partner (Schools) and may be called upon to mentor and develop less experienced team members; there are no direct line management responsibilities.

The successful candidate will provide consistent, high quality support to customer schools throughout the Local Government Reorganisation and transition to Future Surrey, ensuring continuity of service, protecting commercial relationships, and maintaining strong customer loyalty.

The postholder will deliver traded employee relations (ER) consultancy to schools purchasing services from the Surrey County Council Schools HR Service. As a fully traded offer, the role requires strong subject matter expertise, sensitive customer relationship management, and a commercially focused approach. This consultancy offer complements the council's statutory responsibilities by providing high quality, timely professional advice to support lawful and consistent people management.

Your Application

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

• Customer Focus: The ability to build trusted, professional relationships with a diverse range of schools, providing high quality, customer centred HR advice that supports consistent, lawful decision making.
• Teamwork: Evidence of collaborative working with colleagues, school leaders and partners, contributing to shared outcomes across a commercial, professional services environment.
• Effective Delivery: Significant experience managing complex, high risk employee relations casework with sound judgement and effective risk assessment in a local authority context.
• Purposeful Communication: Proven ability to provide clear, confident and commercially focused HR guidance to senior school leaders, including complex or sensitive employment matters.
• High-Performance: Strong working knowledge of employment law, education staffing regulations, and teachers' pay and conditions, with the ability to apply this expertise to support sound organisational decision making.
• Credibility and Collaboration: Experience providing leadership coaching or advisory support, demonstrating the maturity and influence required to engage credibly with senior stakeholders.

You will need to have the willingness and ability to travel across Surrey to deliver timely, responsive on site support to customer schools.

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

• What has motivated you to apply for this role?
• Explain how your previous experience is relevant to this new role?
• Tell us about some of your involvement in employee relations casework, describing process and outcomes, and how you added value as an HR professional.
• Describe a situation you have found yourself in which explains how you would use your communication and influencing skills to engage and coach school leadership teams and other high-level stakeholders effectively?

The job advert closes at 23:59 on 08/03/2026 with interviews planned to follow.

We look forward to receiving your application, please click on the apply online button below to submit.

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.

Join our dynamic team and shape the future of local government. Make a lasting impact with innovative solutions and improved services for our community. Help us build a brighter future for our residents! Please see more information on our website.

Our Commitment

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.