Plant Health Surveillance and Action Technical Lead ID:2728

The Animal Plant Health Agency (APHA) is an arm's length body, government agency that sits within the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

We have one mission, which is to safeguard plant and animal health, for the benefit of everyone in society, the environment, and the economy. - Every one of our employees is passionate about achieving this mission.

The Surveillance and Action Technical Lead - within Plant and Bee Health Services (P&BH), will be APHA's Technical Plant Health lead for inland surveillance and action responsible for providing technical advice, guidance and direction to colleagues within APHA, Defra, other UK government departments and devolved administrations.

The role will help set and apply risk-based enforcement regimes to deliver legislative bio-security and consumer protection. The post will cover Plant Health inland detection surveillance as well as outbreak, incursion or interception preparedness and response.

You will work across P&BH and policy teams day to day, whilst contributing to the wider management of APHA and Plant and Bee Health.

The role advertised will involve regular travel to APHA locations and across wider GB. Out of hours and detached duty work maybe required in the event of an outbreak or incident. The post-holder will support an on-call rota for incident management.

Job description
The key focus of this role is to:

Set the direction and manage all activities of the APHA's Technical Advice Panel (TAP) for surveillance & action including maintenance of technical instructions, provision of training and adherence to ISO.
Fulfil an Incident Management Team role during a major outbreak and oversight of the technical aspects of APHA response to minor outbreaks including track and trace.
Oversight of detection surveillance design and planning.
Work with APHA Contingency Planning Division, contracts, SHAW and other teams across APHA to improve incident response including exercising, auditing, process and harmonisation.
Work with operational teams to monitor quality, delivery and targets.
Work with APHA and Defra Policy colleagues to develop policies and procedures to deliver Plant Health legislation including published contingency plans.
Provide technical representation to Defra through quarterly meetings and at wider stakeholder meetings. When appropriate this may also extend to some aspects of in-field delivery too.
Maintain comprehensive overview of industry matters through effective collaboration, communication, working visits with inspectors and meetings.
Work with other official bodies to ensure effective cross-sector enforcement.
Role model and promote proactive leadership, embedding the necessary performance improvements and culture change across teams to ensure that all staff operate to the required policies and procedures, H&S standards and quality assurance levels.
Work closely with the Head of Plant and Bee Health and the Chief Plant Health & Seeds inspector to set delivery strategy and direction for the teams and work with the field to ensure all customer targets are met.
To manage a small team of staff ensuring the performance, behaviours and attendance of assigned teams is proactively managed, reviewing performance on a regular basis and establishing an environment in which everyone can, and does, contribute effectively and that different perspectives are heard and channelled towards achieving the Agency's objectives.

Key tasks:
Demonstrate key leadership behaviour and promote continuous improvement initiatives to deliver an improved inspector and client experience.
Lead and line manage Surveillance and Action's technical team.
Deputise for other G7 and G6 posts as required. Contribute to the maintenance of APHA's effectiveness to respond to Plant Health incidentsMaintain ISO 17025 accreditation and any other quality assurance processes.
Develop instructions and training material to ensure skills are maintained and enhanced.
Be a subject matter expert for development of relevant IT systems, incident response and detection surveillance.
Play a leading role in the design, development and implementation of business reforms and policy initiatives, undertaking a key role in project teams and cultural change.
Use data to review and manage issues identified.
Out of hours work may be required in the event incidents, this may not relate directly to this post.
To provide advice to policy development, central projects, and activities to represent operational experience and expertise.