Business Support Officer

Salary

£29,064 - £31,022

Contractual hours

Basis

Fixed Hours

Package

We are pleased to offer a wide range of benefits to support you and your wellbeing. You can read about them on our Why work for us pages.

Job category/type

Administration

Date posted

05/05/2026

Job reference

REQ0000872

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Do you want to work in a service supporting families? Are you an enthusiastic, organised, confident administrator? If so, we want to hear from you!

As a Business Support Officer, you will be working in a small pod/team to support children from diverse backgrounds throughout their journey from assessment to leaving care. You will be a key member of the pod of social workers whilst also working alongside a number of other pods as part of the larger team.

You will have a full induction to the work and be supported to attain the required skills by training and shadowing to enhance existing/transferable skills and learn and understand the role.

Fixed Term - 12 months

Ideally you will have experience of working in a busy office environment with the ability to prioritise your workload around the demands of the service whilst still managing to meet statutory deadlines. This role involves the use of various computer packages, and you will provide customer-focused information to people who contact the service. You will be highly organised and have an ability to work both independently and as part of a team. You will need to enjoy solving problems and managing an evolving workload with good time management skills being essential. If this is you, we would welcome your application to our Business Support Officer vacancy.

If you have any questions or for an informal chat about the role, please contact Karly Blackford on ***email_hidden***

Here is what our Business Support Officers say about working in Families Children & Wellbeing:

“The diversity of duties and working in Children’s Services is what attracted me to the role”

“Supporting my social workers gives me a lot of job satisfaction – I feel like I am really involved in helping families’ lives”

“Feeling you have helped a client in the absence of the social worker in trying to sort out their problems. Having an understanding of their case and developing a rapport with some of the parents.”

“The part I have most enjoyed about being the Business support Officer for the Pod is how I've felt truly part of the team. Just because I'm business support and they're social workers, they've never not included me in group discussions, supervisions or activities outside of work; I've been extremely lucky to have worked with the Pod”

Key skills you can offer:

• A flexible, adaptable approach to work with ability to multitask effectively according to business priorities
• Ability to deal with confidential information tactfully and with discretion
• Accuracy and attention to detail
• Experience in business support duties including arranging meetings and taking minutes which may be of a complex nature.
• Competent in working with Outlook and Microsoft Office packages
• Ability to deal with confidential information tactfully and with discretion.
• Inputting and retrieval of data on service-based IT system

Being an active part of group supervisions

1-2-1 support from your Business Support Manager

A programme of learning and development opportunities through our Learning Zone

An online toolbox of resources to support the work of the Business Support Officer

Peer support from other business support colleagues across the service

Encouraging a diverse workforce

Our city is known and loved for its diversity. Not only is the mixture of people, culture and skills vital to the economic and social development of the city, it's what makes Brighton & Hove such a great place to live, work and visit. We are committed to developing and retaining a workforce that is representative of the diverse communities we serve so we welcome applications from individuals from all backgrounds. In order to achieve our aims of proportionate representation, we particularly encourage applicants from a BME or White Other background as well as those who identify as disabled, male or trans.

Find out more about our commitment to being a fair and inclusive place to work where everyone can achieve their potential by reading about our fair and inclusive actions, our anti-racism strategy and the work we are doing to encourage a diverse workforce (brighton-hove.gov.uk).

Why work for us?

As a council, we want to:

• be connected
• be confident
• be innovative and creative
• be diverse and inclusive
• be healthy and psychologically safe

For more information about our values and the benefits of working at the council, visit Why work for us which gives details of our wellbeing support, our benefits including leave and pensions as well as details of our training and development.

How to apply

Please read our Apply for a job at the council pages carefully. They give you all the guidance you need to complete your application as well as information on what will happen after you’ve submitted your application and at interview.

As part of your application, you will need to provide your education and career history and answer some application/shortlisting questions. Your answers to the application/shortlisting questions are the most important part of your application as they will be used in the shortlisting process to assess whether you meet the essential requirements for the role that are set out in the person specification and to decide whether you should be offered an interview. Before you start your application, please read our Shortlisting questions guidance (brighton-hove.gov.uk) as this gives important advice which will increase your chance of success in the shortlisting process.

AI advice for candidates

We are interested in hearing about your experience and skills in your own words. While we value people who know how to use AI, we ask that you minimise using it in your application.

We are keen to hear how your experience and skills align to our values and the skills and experience needed to perform well in our roles with clear real examples from you. To support you in this, we have guidance on using the STAR model which can help you ensure you are telling us your whole story. We also provide clarity on the skills we are looking for in our adverts and in the job description/person specification attached to each job advert.

All the applications we receive are read by at least two hiring managers and we do not use AI in this process. Our experience of reading applications is that those that have heavily used AI contain generic paragraphs that are strikingly similar to other applicants’ responses. This makes it extremely difficult to differentiate between applications, and doesn't give us enough evidence of your individual skills. There is a risk that we will therefore not be able to shortlist you. Instead, we recommend you ensure your application stands out by presenting clear examples of your actual skills and experiences in your own words.

Additional information

Your starting salary will be pro rata if the above position is less than 37 hours or term-time only.

Please note that this post is subject to a Basic Disclosure Criminal Records Check.

We are a workplace that supports flexibility and employee wellbeing in the way we work whilst providing the best service for our customers. Team and service working arrangements are designed to support both employee work life balance and team collaboration. These would be part of your individual working arrangements alongside any personal preference agreed with your manager in advance of joining. Your contractual location will be the designated council office for your team and travel to and from your contractual location would be at your own expense.