Employer United Lincolnshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust Employer type NHS Site Lincoln County Hospital Town Lincoln Salary £53,755 - £60,504 per annum Salary period Yearly Closing 24/07/2025 23:59
Group Head of Catering - Band 8a
NHS AfC: Band 8a
We recognise that outstanding care can only be delivered through our people. We want to attract people who can help us deliver our vision. We want in return to help people achieve what they wish in their careers in the NHS at ULTH.
We are always keen to welcome highly skilled, committed and compassionate individuals to our hospitals – people who put patients at the heart of everything they do and are ready to help us achieve our vision.
Our values guide everything we do. They are:
* Patient-centred –Putting patients at the heart of everything we do, listening and responding to their needs and wishes.
* Safety –Following ULTH and professional guidelines. Speaking up to make sure patients and staff are safe from harm.
* Excellence –Striving to be the best that we can be. Innovating and learning from others.
* Compassion –Caring for patients and their loved ones in ways we would want for our friends and family.
* Respect –Behaving and using language that demonstrates respect and courtesy to others. Zero tolerance to bullying, inequality, prejudice and discrimination.
If you believe in them too, then you are ready to join the ULTH team.
We’ve taken great pride in building working environments where staff always feel valued, cared for and part of a team. Without doubt this is a challenging yet very rewarding job that is at the centre of health and care in Lincolnshire - making a positive difference to our patients.
Our Trust is situated in the beautiful county of Lincolnshire and is one of the biggest acute hospital trusts in England, serving a population of more than 700,000 people. We provide acute and specialist services to people in Lincolnshire and neighbouring counties. We have an annual income of £710 million (22/23) and we employ nearly 8,600 people.
Our Board have recently agreed a new vision statement – “Outstanding Care Personally Delivered” – stating their ambition for our Trust to be among the best.
We also have a five year Integrated Improvement Plan setting out how we will achieve our strategic objectives, for patients, services, people and partners, the last recognising that our future success depends on our ability to ensure the Lincolnshire healthcare system is successful in achieving its ambition to help people live healthier lives and provide care closer to where people live.
Our latest CQC report increased our ratings for being effective and well-led from ‘Requires Improvement’ to ‘Good’. Our rating for caring remained as ‘Good’.
This is in recognition of the huge amount of work that our amazing staff have done to improve the quality of care for our patients in recent years.
We are committed to helping our staff balance their work and home lives and ensure they feel supported, valued and appreciated.
So,what is in it for you?
* Flexible working: Depending on the needs of your role, we will consider requests for flexible and/or part-time working for whatever reason you should need it. We recognise flexible working will not look the same for everyone, because it depends on the nature of the role and the needs of the individual.
Types of flexibility could include:
* Part-time - less than 37.5 hours per week.
* Off-site/remote working - working from home or other sites for part or all the week.
* Compressed hours – usually full-time hours but over fewer days or shifts.
* Staggered hours – having different start and finish times.
* Set shift patterns – to allow for predictability
* NHS Pension:A generous and flexible pension scheme with contributions from us as your employer fully protected against inflation and guaranteed by the government
* Annual Leave: Starting at 27 days a year, rising to 33 days after 10 years plus eight bank holidays (for staff covered by Agenda for Change) For Medical Workforce positions (Consultant and Specialty Doctor), the full-time entitlement commences from 32 days per annum. For all other Medical Workforce positions, the full-time entitlement commences from 27 days per annum.
* Bank working:The chance to work extra hours at enhanced rates and we will pay you weekly too, ideal if your income needs a quick boost.
In addition, there ismore.
* Family & Childcare: Including on-site nurseries at Lincoln County Hospital and Pilgrim Hospital Boston, maternity, paternity, adoption & shared parental leave following a set period of employment.
* Health & Wellbeing: including counselling, mental health first aid, physiotherapy, eye tests.
* Learning & Development including Lincolnshire Talent Academy, leadership training, medical education, clinical education, Lincolnshire clinical research
* Financial support and benefits i ncluding Cycle2Work, car lease scheme, home electronics. Free on-site parking and free tea and coffee and the ability to save and borrow through your salary.
* Rewards & Recognition including staff awards, long service awards, retirement awards, examples of excellence and staff lottery.
Enjoy a better quality of life in one of the UK’s most welcoming counties. Whether you’re taking the first exciting steps in your career, itching for a new challenge or searching for a better place to raise a family, Lincolnshire welcomes everyone. Discover a range of rewarding health and social care careers in a county that’s friendly, fascinating, affordable and brimming with everything you need to live a happy life. Visit beinlincolnshire.com to find out more .
Job overview
Lead the Group's catering function to inpatient dining, ensuring the highest standard of food quality, compliance, training and standards. Additionally lead our catering to our staff and visitors through our various restaurants and cafes, to offer a high class service.
We have a tremendously hard working and dedicated catering team across the Group, serving over one and a half million meals per year. We are looking for that experienced leader to continue to drive standards, offer our patients and staff innovation and lead on our technological improvement
Main duties of the job
The Group Head of Catering is responsible for all strategic catering operations and will have direct operational responsibility for the Catering team including budgetary responsibility. .
As a key member of the Facilities management team, you will lead on all Catering matters, ensuring a quality service that ensures the Catering provision is appropriate, effective and responsive to the strategic needs of the Trust and achieved within the agreed budget parameters.
The post holder will be required to work with senior colleagues to develop operational service delivery strategies, policies and to implement improvement management processes with relevant SOP and policies.
The post holder will also be responsible for transformational change management process and its implementation across Catering Services thereby supporting the delivery of service enabling projects that will enhance and align services processes/delivery within the Catering service.
To ensure all key performance indicators are achieved which includes specific elements in Trust and National Performance frameworks whilst striving for continuous improvement.
The post holder will manage a significant financial budget with a prudent service budget approach whilst delivering an excellent cost-effective patient catering/retail service.
Working for our organisation
Lincoln Hospital is a thriving university city and with the opening of the medical school, it provides all major specialties and a 24-hour major accident and emergency service.
United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust has been granted teaching hospital status, after demonstrating evidence to significant teaching commitment. From now on it will be known as United Lincolnshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust.
Pilgrim Hospital is situated in beautiful countryside and serves the communities in the South Lincolnshire area. It provides all major specialties and a 24-hour major accident and emergency service.
Grantham and District Hospital serves the communities of Grantham and the local area. It provides ambulatory paediatric and accident and emergency services.
Lincolnshire Community Health Services NHS Trust (LCHS) and United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust (ULHT) have come together in a Group arrangement, with the goal of improving the care provided to patients across the county.
This will not constitute a formal merger of the two organisations, but will bring the Trusts together under a single Board and Executive Leadership Team, with the goal of improving the care that is provided to patients both in the community and in hospitals across Lincolnshire. Both Trusts will retain their separate statutory names and legal obligations.
The Group will be known as Lincolnshire Community and Hospitals NHS Group (LCHG).
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
· Ensure the successful management and delivery of high-quality Catering services (retail and patient catering) across the Trust.
· Ensure the cleanliness and comfort of the Catering environments and ensure all patient associated activities are delivered ensuring safety and quality at all times.
· Management of all external catering contracts, monitoring of these as well as internal services ensuring high standards of service delivery for all services.
· Ensure the Trust is compliant and adhere with all Catering related aspects of CQC compliance essential standards –catering and fabric.
· Lead and support Patient Led Assessment of the Care Environment (PLACE) to ensure continuous improvement in all aspects of the patient environment in relation to Catering
· Approve Catering services business continuity plans as part of the Trusts review process maximising the opportunities for business continuity support across the Trust
· Produce catering business cases to present to the Strategic Head of Facilities and Property Services to drive strategic and operational transformation.
· To develop relationships with clinical teams whilst upholding the role of the Catering service and building confidence in the food services provided within the Trust.
· To maintain and actively encourage links with external agencies such as Environmental Health to ensure compliance with current Food Safety Legislation.
· To communicate on all matters relating to Catering, ensuring clear verbal and/or written communication, utilising team briefings, departmental meetings and 1:1’s to ensure understanding.
· Responsible for providing professional Catering advice and management support to external service users in line with service level agreements.
· To liaise with user departments and carry out routine service reviews to monitor customer satisfaction and participate in external service audits/assessments e.g., PLACE.
· Provide expert and specialist advice on the areas within your management control and respond to national and local directives, as appropriate.
· To maintain contact with consumers by undertaking regular ward visits and ensure that a register of compliments and complaints is maintained, and action taken and recorded to rectify any issues identified.
· To monitor the effectiveness of the patient food delivery service in conjunction with ward-based staff and highlight areas for improvement, taking corrective action as necessary.
· Regularly monitor external service contracts and review/re-tender as necessary. Monitor the market environment and adjust service procurement strategy to achieve maximum sustainable benefits.
· Develop and implement a continual review of services and contracts, preparing internal/external returns as required.
· Support the Trust as appropriate in complying with all NHSE and legislative guidance and requirements including EU directives, statutory body requirements, hazard and safety notices and advice relating to patient, public or staff safety, personal privacy and confidentiality.
· Develop the optimal level and location of Catering services to be provided in line with the Trust’s overall strategy and comply with the Health and Safety at Work Act (and associated regulations) Food Safety Act (and subsequent regulations) CQC standards, Hospital Food Standards, PLACE and other relevant directives.
· To ensure that sensible policies of standardisation and rationalisation are followed throughout the Trust within the constraints that exist, e.g., menu and price setting and equipment utilisation.
· To challenge existing practices, ensuring that solutions taking into account best practice and changing healthcare.
· To ensure that all Catering services are flexible to meet the nutritional and dietary requirements of all patients and to liaise with dieticians and clinical colleagues to plan patient menus to ensure they achieve the required nutritional standards.
· To plan patient menus with a multi-disciplinary team to ensure compliance with CQUINN requirements regarding nutritional needs.
· To ensure processes are in place to deploy staff effectively and meet service demands.
· Ensure HACCP reviews are completed and available as required, in a well-structured and organised manner ensuring compliance with food safety legislation and that food hygiene ratings are maintained at the highest level.
· To maintain an equipment asset register and advise on replacement programme for food service needs.
· To communicate service change to staffing groups where there may be some resistance. Negotiating, influential and reasoning skills are required to deliver change to improve/modernise the department.
· To undertake/organise six monthly/annual performance reviews with all Catering staff, ensuring objectives are set and PDP’s are in place and to encourage staff with their own personal development.
· To identify staff training needs and ensure on-the-job training and corrective coaching as appropriate and to evaluate the effectiveness’ of this training.
Person specification
Previous Experience
* Evidence of servicing information requirements in a complex environment.
* Significant experience in a post requiring use of own initiative whilst working as part of a team.
* Experience of processes administrative
* Experience of working in the NHS or other large customer service environment/organisation.
* Experience of working to strict deadlines.
* Experienced in the use of Microsoft applications including database use.
* People management leading a large team
Qualifications
* Food hygiene Level 4
* Education to degree level in relevant area eg catering, hospitality, food and beverage or to demonstrate equivalent experience.
* Post graduate knowledge through training and/or experience to masters equivalent level
* Management qualification or commit to work towards this within first 12 months.
* Extensive IM&T Skills including Word, Excel, Access and e-mail.
* Evidence of good written presentation skills.
* Evidence of good verbal communication skills.
* Evidence of co-ordination and organisational skills.
* Highly numerate and able to analyse and interpret information.
* Attention to detail and accuracy
* Ability to prioritise work and meet deadlines.
* Able to analyse data, information and trends on complaints and present to a wide ranging audience.
* Knowledge of Estates & Facilities databases eg ERIC/PEAT.
* Knowledge of performance management systems eg balanced scorecard.
Specific Requirements
* Ability to work flexibility whilst recognising deadlines must be met.
* Must remain calm under pressure.
* Flexible approach to working hours when workload demands.
* Attention to detail and accuracy.
* Ability to work as part of team.
* Problem solving skills – ability to focus on detail
* Analytical.
* Process orientated.
* Committed to self-development and appraisal.
* Understanding of professionalism and confidentiality.
ULTH recognises that everyone is different, and values the unique contribution that individual experiences, knowledge and skills make in delivering quality healthcare and becoming a model employer. We are committed to transforming our organisational culture by actively committing to implementing the Trust Single Equality Scheme, and other policies, such as the Dignity in Care policy and the Dignity at Work policy. We will continue to promote equality and challenge discrimination in all service provision, recognising and meeting the needs of the diverse communities we serve. We will strive to provide an environment in which people want to work and to be a model employer leading in good employment practice.
As a responsible employer ULTH would encourage staff wishing to join the Trust to take up the COVID vaccination as this continues to remain the best line of defence against COVID19
Please note that we do not accept CVs.
Due to the high volume of applications we receive, ULTH reserves the right to close this advert prior to the closing date.
No DBS fees to pay: Successful candidates will have DBS applications applied for & paid by ULTH where applicable. There is no requirement to reimburse ULTH for this cost.
We welcome applications from the UK Armed Forces Community. On the application form please tick “Member of the Armed Forces Community” if the below applies to you.
You are:
* A Veteran
* A Military Reserve
* Partner/Spouse of those Serving NB: partners/spouses are only eligible whilst their partner is serving in the Armed Forces
Candidates are advised to read the attached guidance on using AI technology. When you complete your application, you are required to declare that the information in your application form is true and complete.
Employer certification / accreditation badges
The postholder will have access to vulnerable people in the course of their normal duties and as such this post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service to check for any previous criminal convictions.
Application numbers
This vacancy may close early if it receives a high number of applications. Please complete and submit your application in good time to avoid disappointment.
Name David Purdy Job title Group Deputy Director of Estates & Facilities Email address [emailprotected] Telephone number 07703532964
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