Category Manager

West Sussex County Council are looking for a Category Manager to manage sub-categories, you will have strong leadership and desire to grow.

To give you an indication of our current Procurement structure and where our Category Manager role sits, please see below:

• Head Procurement & Contract Manager
• Category Lead (Place)
  • Category Manager
  • Procurement Manager
  • Strategic Contract Officer
  • Procurement Support Officer

The Opportunity

Salary: £62,676 to £66,211 per annum.

Working Pattern: Full time 37 hours per week.

Location: County Hall, Chichester and hybrid working (onsite once a week)

Interviews: 12 March 2025

West Sussex County Council have an exciting opportunity to join our ambitious and dynamic central procurement team, making a real difference to the organisation and our stakeholders.

As the Category Manager you will collaborate with Directorates/Services and Category Lead to champion best practice and commercial thinking. As a Category Manager you will deliver value for money outcomes and transform the ways services are delivered.

You will develop and implement robust sub-category strategies for the Place category. This involves optimising the performance of external providers for the business in terms of cost, quality, delivery and responsiveness.

As the subject matter expert, you will provide best practice guidance for the procurement of sub-categories across the Place directorates taking into consideration the full supplier lifecycle. This role will focus on highways, construction, waste and environment and communities.

West Sussex County Council offer multiple training and development opportunities, including sponsorship (via a learning agreement or apprenticeship) to obtain a MCIPS procurement qualification.

What are we looking for?

You will be someone that provides strong procurement advice for categories of spend. You will have a good understanding of commercial risks and exposure and can demonstrate application of this. A clear understanding of supplier management and can demonstrate management of a supplier over time, tracking SLA's and compliance.

Key competency areas include:

• Technical procurement
• Influencing and building external and internal relationships
• Change and stakeholder management
• Regulatory compliance

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

Working for us

As well as adding real value to our service users and our communities, as an employer we recognise our employees are central in being able to achieve this. To recognise this we want to help support your development and provide an great place to work ensuring you can fulfil your full potential, have access to a range of benefits including:

• an excellent local government pension scheme
• generous holiday entitlement of 30 days (plus opportunity to buy additional leave)
• a range of flexible working options, depending on your job role
• maternity, paternity, dependency and adoption leave
• volunteering opportunities
• training and development opportunities, including coaching and mentoring
• a range of discounts giving our staff access to hundreds of offers; groceries, travel, cinema tickets, days out, leisure activities, high street retailers and the opportunity to save over £1,000 a year through our West Sussex Choices benefits platform (see our Staff discounts page if you are a business looking to offer a discount)
• health and wellbeing benefits including access to our Employee Assistance Programme, Mental Health First Aiders and Voluntary Health Cash Plans

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

Further information

The reference number for this role is CRS00903.

For an informal conversation or for further information regarding the role, please contact Neil Robb (Category Lead) at . For issues or queries regarding your application please contact .

To apply, please follow the links below to upload your CV and Cover Letter. In your cover letter please outline your motivations for applying and explaining the skills and experience you can bring to the role (please refer to the key skills) ensuring that any gaps in employment are covered in your CV. Please ensure you have saved the job description attached to the main advert on our website as, once the job has closed, you may not have the opportunity to download again.

We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults. This post is subject to 3 years referencing and a health check.