Senior Public Health Strategist WCC624598

Job Details:

Salary range: £56,436 - £59,574 per annum. Salary negotiable depending upon experience.
Work location: Westminster City Hall, 64 Victoria Street, Westminster, SW1E 6QP
Hours per week: 36
Contract type: Temporary up to 15 months
Closing date: 18 August 2026

About Us:

THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF SAFIA’S INCLUSIVE NATURE

Public Health at Westminster City Council is a place of Extraordinary Stories. Where empathy drives collaboration and builds vibrant, inclusive communities.

Safia is an excellent example of someone who has brought real passion to her role. From her Environmental Health work with Chinatown’s restaurateurs to time out volunteering with refugees in Jordan, she understands people and has always wanted to help them. It’s what inspired her to join Public Health. She works with a fantastic team, tackling inequality across Westminster, supporting vulnerable people, and promoting mental health services.

Safia’s natural people skills mean she thrives when working with others. The work she does is focused on bringing London’s diverse cultures together, building trust, improving mental health, and maintaining the highest of standards. And Westminster is vibrant with the positive impact she and the team have on its communities.

The Role:

As a Senior Public Health Strategist, you can make your own powerful contribution to the success of two of London’s most dynamic boroughs, Westminster and Kensington & Chelsea. Here, you’ll be part of an ambitious Bi-borough Public Health team focused on improving residents’ health and wellbeing and tackling health inequalities.

This is a role where strategy needs to turn into real action. You’ll manage and review programmes and services that support council priorities, meet Public Health statutory requirements and respond to local needs. Whether the focus is prevention, partnership working or improving health outcomes, your work will help make public health priorities real across both boroughs.

You’ll work closely with colleagues, wider strategic leads, Heads of Service and partners to deliver tangible public health outputs. That means using evidence and insight well, managing competing priorities and helping shape plans that can be delivered in a fast-moving local government environment.

A key part of the role will be helping public health thinking reach beyond the Public Health team itself. You’ll support the effective use of Public Health skills and funding across the councils, helping embed public health principles into services, commissioning and wider council activity.

You’ll also build strong relationships with senior management teams and other stakeholders, acting as a trusted adviser who can coach, influence and respectfully challenge where needed. With your sound judgement, resilience and political awareness, you’ll help bring people with you and keep work focused on what will make the biggest difference for residents.

At the same time, you’ll also contribute to the wider team’s culture, development and business planning, modelling the council’s values, behaviours and key Public Health competencies in the way you work. For someone looking to grow their strategic leadership and broaden their influence, this is the role to shape public health change at the local level.

Please refer to the Job Description for more information.

About You:

You’ll bring at least three years’ experience working in public health or a similar role within the NHS, a local authority or another relevant setting. As an expert on turning evidence into work that improves outcomes for residents and communities, you will make a visible difference to those around you.

You’ll be confident carrying out health needs assessments, bringing together data, information and evidence to build a solid picture of what is happening and what needs to change. You’ll also know how to evaluate public health interventions, measure their impact and use what you learn to improve services or identify better ways of working.

You’ll understand the commissioning cycle and service design, and you’ll be comfortable managing several pieces of work at the same time. From shaping an idea through to delivering an outcome, you’ll be organised, self-motivated and able to work independently with limited supervision.

Relationships will be central to the role. You’ll be confident working with senior stakeholders, leading meetings and building trust across different organisations. You’ll also know how to work with residents and communities, bringing different perspectives together and using them to shape better services.

You’ll be analytical, curious and able to get to grips with new information quickly. Quantitative analysis will come naturally to you as you develop proposals, challenge accepted ideas and make a strong case for change based on evidence.

Your communication skills will be second to none. Whether you are writing a detailed report, presenting to a group or having a difficult conversation, you’ll be able to explain sensitive or contentious information with tact and political awareness.

You’ll understand best practice in public health, as well as the wider political, financial and organisational pressures facing local government and the NHS. Knowledge of London’s public health and NHS system, change management or local government improvement would be helpful, but what matters most is your ability to work in partnership, spot barriers early and find practical ways through.

You’ll bring strong IT and AI skills, including Copilot, Excel, Word, PowerPoint and Outlook. Just as importantly, you’ll bring a commitment to excellent public services, a can-do attitude, honesty, integrity and a values-led approach to everything you do.

Westminster City Council is committed to supporting Care Leavers into the workplace. Care Leavers seeking their first job and who wish to be considered under our scheme, will automatically be invited to interview should they meet the essential criteria for the role.

The Council is committed to achieving diverse shortlists to support our desire to increase the number of staff from underrepresented groups in our workforce. We especially encourage applications from a Global Majority (GM), people who are Black, Asian, Brown, dual-heritage, indigenous to the global south, and or have been racialised as 'ethnic minorities' (formally known as B.A.M.E, Black, Asian and multiple ethnic) background and, while the role is open to all applicants, we will utilise the positive action provisions of the Equality Act 2010 to appoint a candidate from a global majority background where there is a choice between two candidates of equal merit. If you are from a Global Majority background you can self-declare this to the hiring manager as part of our positive action commitments.

What We Offer:

Westminster is an amazing place. We are home to more than 200,000 residents from all backgrounds, over 50,000 vibrant and vital businesses and three-quarters-of-a-million people work in Westminster. Westminster City Council is one in which our communities are at the heart of our decision-making and help to determine the city’s future. By working directly with our communities and other partners, we can build a more inclusive city that celebrates our diverse communities, and where residents, workers and visitors from all backgrounds will feel welcome and safe. At Westminster City Council, we pride ourselves on being an inclusive workplace and employer of choice. We encourage and welcome applications from people from all backgrounds and aim to have a workforce that, at all levels, represents the communities we serve. We champion equality, diversity, inclusion and wellbeing and aim to create a workplace where everyone feels valued, has a sense of belonging and is empowered to be their best, that is Our Westminster Way. To find out more about how we do this visit https://www.westminster.gov.uk/health-and-social-care/

As a forward-thinking Council we appreciate that people work in different ways, therefore our staff benefit from working a range of flexible working patterns as well as Agile working.

The Council is a Disability Confident Employer. If you have declared a disability in your application, we guarantee an interview if you meet the essential criteria of the job. If you are invited for interview, you will be asked if you need any reasonable adjustments in order to attend, and we will make these wherever possible.

We reserve the right to extend or close this vacancy early without warning subject to the volume of suitable applicants.