GELS - Deputy Service Lead

This is a Gloucestershire County Council job.

• Job Title: GELS - Deputy Service Lead
• Job Location: Gloucestershire
• Salary: £54,143 - £56,293 per annum
• Hours per Week: 37.00
• Contract Type: Fixed Term
• Duration: 6 Months
• Closing Date: 08/11/2026
• Job Requisition Number: 15155
• This post is not open to job share

Thinking about your next leadership opportunity?

Ready to take the next step and lead a service that makes a real difference to people across Gloucestershire?

We have an exciting opportunity for an experienced manager, or someone ready to further develop their management experience, to join Gloucestershire Equipment Loans service (GELS) as Deputy Service Lead on a full-time, six-month opportunity.

GELS plays an important role in supporting health and social care across Gloucestershire through the distribution, delivery, collection, maintenance and refurbishment of community equipment, helping people to remain independent in their own homes and supporting hospital discharge.

About the Role:

Working alongside the Community Equipment Service Manager, you will take a visible and active leadership role across GELS, helping to ensure our different service areas work effectively together and that we continue to deliver a high-quality, responsive service for our customers and partners.

This is very much a leadership opportunity. You will be expected to provide clear direction, support and challenge to teams, manage competing operational priorities, build positive relationships with colleagues and partners, and contribute to service improvement and change. The role also involves supporting performance, safe working practices, problem-solving, policy development and collaborative working with Health colleagues and commissioners.

Our teams span customer service, warehouse, transport, logistics, equipment refurbishment, finance and administration, and the service also provides supported employment for people with disabilities who experience substantial barriers to employment.

About You:

We are looking for someone who can demonstrate strong, credible and confident leadership and who is comfortable taking responsibility and leading others.

You should be able to demonstrate experience or capability in areas such as:

• Leading, supporting and developing teams.
• Providing clear direction while creating an environment of accountability and empowerment.
• Managing performance and operational priorities.
• Building effective relationships with colleagues, senior managers and partners.
• Remaining resilient and solution-focused when dealing with challenge and change.
• Creating a positive learning culture where people are encouraged to develop.
• Communicating confidently and supporting continuous service improvement.
  
  

This is an excellent opportunity for someone looking to step up, broaden their leadership experience and gain greater exposure to the management and development of a complex operational service.

Our values are at the heart of everything we do and how we treat each other. They provide essential guiding principles about the way that we work and set the tone for our culture, and identify what we, as an organisation, care about. See more about our Values on our website. If you hold the same behaviours and approach, then we want to hear from you!

We Offer:

Our people do all they can to make the difference to local communities in Gloucestershire. And that’s exactly what we aim to do for our people. Here are some of the ways we aim to achieve this:

• 25.5 days annual leave, plus bank holidays
• Access to the Local Government Pension Scheme
• Free parking at our sites in Hempsted and Mitcheldean
• Regular formal and informal support
• Safe, supportive and positive working environment with regular, reflective supervision
• Training and development opportunities
• Staff discount scheme that offers access to great savings including discounts with major supermarket chains and high street retailers
• Access to our Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) that provides free, confidential, counselling and advice for employees, available 24 hours a day, online and by telephone
• Links to employee networks such as Prism (LGBT+) network and the Young Employees Network.
• Gloucestershire Salary Sacrifice Green Car Scheme (T&C's apply)
• GCC's Cycle to Work Salary Sacrifice Scheme

Applying:

Please write your application with consideration for the criteria in the Job Profile (see link below).

Your application should include examples of why you should be considered and cover the experience, skills and knowledge that you would bring to the post.

To arrange an informal discussion with the recruiting manager, please email ASCrecruitment@gloucestershire.gov.uk.

A secondment will be considered for GCC applicants. Please, seek for your manager's approval before applying.

Interviews will take place on 19 November 2026. Please ensure you are available to attend on this date before applying.

Additional Information:

To access the Job Profile for this role, please follow the link below:

Deputy Service Lead Job Profile

Gloucestershire County Council is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people or vulnerable adults and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.

The council is not currently able to offer sponsorship in this role. Candidates will need to have a right to work that enables them to commit to at least 6 months’ employment. Right to work is not transferable from a sponsored role held with another employer.

We want to be an employer of choice, attracting and retaining excellent people to work for us, so that we can best serve all of Gloucestershire’s diverse communities. Our promise to you is that we will provide an inclusive and supportive working environment that enables you to bring your whole self to work and realise your full potential.

It is a legal requirement, under the Immigration Act 2016, that anyone appointed to a ‘customer facing role’ must be able to demonstrate an ability to fulfil all spoken aspects of the role with confidence in fluent English.

Hybrid working arrangements are available for the majority of our roles, giving teams the opportunity to work in a way that suits them, balancing service need and individual choice, with a mix of both remote and office working.

We reserve the right to close this vacancy early due to the volume of applications received. If you are interested in applying, we encourage you to submit your application as early as possible.

If you are an Internal applicant and consider yourself to have a disability* as per the Equality Act (2010), please declare this in an email to recruitment@gloucestershire.gov.uk, as this is NOT currently covered in the application due to a technical error.

By providing this information, you can choose to be considered for a guaranteed interview under our Disability Confident pledge if you meet all essential criteria. It also enables the recruiting manager to arrange any reasonable adjustments you may need during the process.

*a disability is defined as: a physical or mental impairment, which has a substantial and long-term (more than 12 months) adverse effect on a person’s ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.

Applications from any Gloucestershire County Council's employees who are currently on the redeployment register or at risk of redundancy will be considered first at shortlisting stage.