The Spirit of Herefordshire - A place to thrive

Thank you for taking an interest in joining our executive team in Herefordshire. I am delighted you’ve decided to click on our microsite and I want to show you why that could be the best decision you’ve ever made. 

Since joining the council last May I have been impressed with the passion and commitment from our workforce and I now want to build a strong corporate leadership team with the drive and determination to help me take that commitment to the next level. We have recently recruited three new exceptional leaders to complement our wider leadership group to lead on Children and Young People, Economy and Environment and Public Health.  We now require a fourth to lead on Governance and Law and to be our Monitoring Officer.  My ambition is to have leaders with an unwavering ‘one council’ approach to join me as we fundamentally change the way we work as a council to serve our communities.

Our staff are bound together by a strong desire to serve and lead communities and our culture is one of engagement and collaboration. Our staff tell us they feel part of something meaningful and that this is somewhere they can make a difference. We are investing in our people and culture under our strapline ‘The Spirit of Herefordshire’ and our leadership team will be central to leading and embedding our culture change programme throughout the council. We genuinely want Herefordshire to be a place where everyone can thrive and we offer a great working environment where everyone gets a warm welcome and an opportunity to shine.

Our passion for improvement has put us where we are now which is a point of relative financial stability. We proudly boast one of the few social care services delivering exceptional strengths-based services within budget and our children’s improvement focus is our number one corporate priority. Responsive and resilient corporate services are central to enabling improvement and as a core part of our leadership team you will lead on developing the culture of our legal and democratic services as well as the operational direction, impact and overall performance.

Like many rural counties Herefordshire faces a number of long term economic challenges but we really are a county of great opportunity and our county plan gives us clear direction. We have a thriving Enterprise Zone which is home to a recently opened £7.4m business incubator called the Shell Store and the £9m Midlands Centre for Cyber Security. We are home to one of the first all new universities in the country for forty years, the New Model Institute in Technology and Engineering, which has taken its first cohort of students. Herefordshire has a large farming culture and high quality food and drink production from internationally recognised brands. There is a fantastic opportunity for us to drive the development of a new bold long term vision and big plans for the county, shaping Herefordshire for many decades to come.

We have a lot to be proud of in Herefordshire and it has been said that we often ‘punch above our weight’. I hope I’ve given you a flavour of that and you’ve been inspired by what you’ve read so far. There’s much more to tell… and if you have the energy and ambition to take Herefordshire to the next level we want to hear from you. Information on how to apply is contained within the site and of course if you want an informal discussion we’d be happy to arrange that. Thank you for taking to time to read this introduction. If you do decide to apply I hope the application process goes well for you – we’re rooting for you from the start! 

Paul Walker
Chief Executive