Senior planning coordinator (area)

The Opportunity

Salary: NJC Grade 10 £39,862 to £42,839 per annum

Contract Type: Permanent

Working Pattern: 37 hours per week, full-time, Monday to Friday (Business hours between 8.30am - 5.00pm)

Location: County Hall, Chichester, with hybrid working

Closing date: 26 June 2026

Interview date: 03 July 2027

Do you have experience working in the special educational needs sector?

Do you enjoy supporting children and their families?

This is an exciting time to join our Special Educational Needs Assessment Team (SENAT). As a Senior Planning Coordinator, you will work closely with children and young people who have complex SEN, their families, early years providers, schools, colleges, and external agencies to provide advice and guidance.

Your main responsibility is to ensure that statutory processes and timescales are followed and to provide quality monitoring, including checking draft EHCP’s (Education, Health, and Care Plans) written by Planning Coordinators.

In addition, you will be responsible for providing effective monitoring and review of Education, Health, and Care Plans, ensuring the best outcomes for children and young people and the effective use of resources in settings, schools and colleges both in and out‑county.

You will be responsible for the following key areas:

• Undertaking EHCP learning audits.
• Being a subject matter expert and a lead point of contact for the team.
• Providing supervision, training and advice for Planning Coordinators and Caseworkers.
• Contributing to and creating new initiatives, developments, mapping, and identification of needs across the service.
• Making recommendations for improvement of information, service delivery, and customer service.
• Developing and maintaining reports and statistical information.
• Sharing accountability for financial processing and funding allocation of an allocated budget of £250,000.

What You Need To Succeed

Please refer to the key skills in your cover letter as these will be used for shortlisting criteria.

1. Excellent communication (both written and verbal) and interpersonal skills with the ability to communicate complicated or sensitive information with a range of audiences, including non-specialists.
2. Excellent negotiation skills with the ability to convince others to adopt a specific course of action, for example, partnership agencies.
3. Ability to build excellent working relationships with a diverse range of managers, colleagues and key stakeholders, building rapport and developing positive partnership ways of working.
4. Excellent ability to research, analyse and interpret complicated information, for example financial information, in order to contribute to the monitoring of the service delivery.
5. Ability to embrace and adapt to changing situations in a measured and flexible manner in order to respond to the needs of the service.
6. Sound and accurate keyboard skills, in order to produce accurate analysis, reports and statistics.

For more information on the Key Skills, Qualifications and/or Experience required, please refer to the Job Description attached.

About Us

The Special Educational Needs Assessment Team (SENAT) manage the decisions and processes concerned with the statutory education health and care needs assessment process for learners with an education, health and care plan (EHCP), the placement of children in learning settings and the allocation of resources to settings.

The team considers suitability of and, where appropriate, arranges the assessment and placement of children, young people and young adults with special educational needs in accordance with the provisions of the Children and Families Act 2014 (Part 3, SEN) and associated regulations, including the SEN Code of Practice, to ensure that the statutory assessment procedures are followed and that EHCPs are issued and reviewed within the timescales laid down by the regulations.

This will be achieved through direct work with parents, educational settings, young people, health, social care and other external customers and partnership organisations to establish the best ways to support learning for children and Young People (0 – 25).

Benefits

As an employer we recognise that it is our employees that are central to everything we do. We aim to create a supportive and dynamic working environment where employees can achieve their full potential, achieve a healthy work-life balance, and are rewarded for the work they do.

For a full list this can be found at Rewards and Benefits page.

Employer Pension Contribution: TBC, this alters per annum on the 1 April each year (previous employer contribution for 2025 18.70%)

Annual leave: 27 days holiday + Bank Holidays = 35 days

Equity, inclusion and accessibility

We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people, and vulnerable adults.

This post is subject to three years referencing, and an occupational health check.

Equity, inclusion, and accessibility is very important to West Sussex County Council. We welcome and encourage applications from everyone, as this helps us build a diverse and talented workforce, that reflects the communities we serve. We ensure our approach to recruitment is flexible and supportive to enable all applicants to be at their best and to ensure they have the best possible chance of success.

We operate a guaranteed interview scheme for applicants that have a disability, are a veteran or are a care leaver. More information can be found on application help page.

If you require any reasonable adjustments to support your application, please contact Natalie Greene, Recruitment Specialist, at Natalie.Greene@westsussex.gov.uk