Emergency Preparedness, Resilience and Response Lead

Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust · Portsmouth · £57,528–£64,750 (stated in the posting)

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Company Description

Here at Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust, we are proud to provide expert, compassionate care for our local population. We are ranked as the third in the country for research, embedding education and training across the organisation. Our main hub is the Queen Alexandra Hospital, which is one of the largest hospitals on the south coast employing over 8,700 staff.

Our patients come from all walks of life and so do we. We hire great people from a wide variety of backgrounds because it makes our hospital stronger. If you share our values and our enthusiasm for getting it right for patients, colleagues, and our community, you will find a home at Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust.

Job Description

NHS Band 8a Salary:  £57,528 - £64,750 per annum

Hours Per Week:  Full time 37.5 hrs

Contract Type:  Permanent

Job summary

The holder of this Band 8a role will take the lead in shaping and strengthening the Trust’s emergency preparedness, resilience and response (EPRR) arrangements. They will provide strategic leadership for resilience for the organisation, ensuring compliance, driving continuous improvement, leading a specialist team, coordinating with the Isle of Wight NHS Trust EPRR team, maintaining robust preparedness plans and offering expert advice during incidents.

Working closely with partners across local and regional networks, you'll represent the organisation at key forums and step in for the Group Lead for Resilience when needed. This role also champions a culture of resilience across the Trust and wider healthcare system.

Main duties of the job

• The EPRR Lead for Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust (PHU) provides subject matter leadership across the Acute organisation to ensure statutory compliance with the Civil Contingencies Act (2004) and NHS EPRR Core Standards requirements.
• The role will provide leadership to the design and delivery of the Trust EPRR programme, aligned with partners at the Isle of Wight NHS Trust, within the overall Group structure. They will take ownership in ensuring organisational compliance, assurance, programme delivery, and continuous improvement.
• The role will oversee the management of the Business Continuity Programme by the Trust BC Lead and Divisional Business Continuity Leads, ensuring plans are current, tested and aligned to ISO22301 standards.
• The postholder acts as a senior subject matter expert, provides strategic advice during incidents, supports the on-call framework, and deputises for the Group Lead for Resilience when required.
• The role will coordinate with Category 1 and 2 partners and other agencies across the Hampshire & Isle of Wight Local Resilience Forum, and within the health sector including the Integrated Care Board and NHS England; ensuring integrated planning, risk management and effective incident response.
• The post holder operates as the senior EPRR subject matter expert within the organisation, working alongside and to the Group Head of Resilience, and is responsible for interpreting and implementing national EPRR policy and determining how these are locally applied in practice.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead a specialist team in driving forward an ambitious programme of delivery of ever-improving standards of resilience against disruption at PHU.
• Provide senior incident support and preparedness assurance to key decision-makers for the organisation
• Using risk assessment skills, the post holder will be required to provide evidence-based recommendations to senior leaders to inform strategic decision-making and risk management
• Ensure alignment with statutory obligations, NHS planning requirements and system objectives.
• Working with a wide range of multi-agency partners communicating at all levels.
• Contribute effectively to collaborative working across providers, LRF partners, LHRP and beyond teams to ensure consistent organisational preparedness.
• Support clinical and operational partners to embed resilience, learning and risk mitigation in frontline service delivery.
• Support long-term strategic planning and delivery of programme workstreams including planning, training, exercising and business continuity, ensuring arrangements are forward-looking and aligned to emerging risks and national priorities.
• Analyse highly complex information from a wide range of partners and ensure it is communicated appropriately to a wide range of stakeholders.
• Ensure systems for lessons learned, debrief, assurance and improvement are embedded and reported.
• Produce formal EPRR documentation including compliance of core standards, plans, policies, risk assessments, performance reports and briefing papers.
• Analyse and present information to inform strategic decisions and escalation.
• Manage allocated programme budgets and ensure compliant, value-for-money delivery.
• Contribute to business cases, procurement decisions and joint funding bids.
• Line-manage and develop members of the EPRR team, supporting capability, performance and professional standards.
• Promote a collaborative, improvement-focused culture and transfer specialist knowledge across teams.
• Review interpret and update plans, policies and procedures to reflect national policy, good practice and lessons identified, acting as the senior professional lead for EPRR within the organisation.
• Undertake audit, benchmarking and evaluation to support continual improvement and system learning.

For full job details and person specification please refer to enclosed job description.

Qualifications

Essential

• Educated to degree level in relevant subject area, or able to demonstrate at least 2 years specialist knowledge acquired through substantial leadership experience in emergency preparedness
• Level 4 Diploma in Health Emergency Preparedness, Resilience and Response (DipHEPRR) or equivalent specialist qualification/experience working towards

Desirable

• Business continuity qualification.
• Training or teaching qualification.

Experience

Essential

• Experience of EPRR, business continuity, incident response and NHS EPRR assurance frameworks developed through substantial exposure in NHS and multi-agency environments or equivalent sectors.
• Demonstrable experience leading EPRR workstreams including planning, training, exercising and business continuity.

Desirable

• Evidence of professional development in the field of EPRR and/or Business Continuity.

Skills and Knowledge

Essential

• Able to lead complex programme delivery, deputise at senior level and provide specialist judgement in uncertain or pressured situations.
• Able to design, deliver and evaluate large-scale multi-agency training and exercising programmes.
• Able to train, coach, mentor and build capability within the EPRR team.
• EPRR responsibilities under the Civil Contingencies Act and NHS assurance framework.
• Understanding of multi-agency structures including LRF, LHRP, SCG/TCG, and emergency service partnerships and protocols.
• Knowledge of business continuity methodology and organisational resilience principles.

Additional Information

Note: This role will be line managed by the EPRR leads for both Trusts and funded by both Trusts in the Partnership. As such, the role will have a responsibility to share oversight, activity and engagement at both sites. Whilst flexible and remote working are a core part of the working routine, there is an expectation that the EPRR Officer will regularly be physically at each site to provide in-person engagement and support to the local EPRR programme of activity.

The health and wellbeing of our staff is at the forefront of everything we do. We are proud to be able to offer our staff some fantastic benefits including our on-site Nursery, access to our free Beach Hut for those long summer days, our on-site Wellness Centre including a gym and a swimming pool, access to our fantastic staff networks including LGBTQ, Race Equality and DisAbility, and awards ceremonies to recognise your achievements. We believe we can offer support to all of our staff when they need it the most.

We welcome the unique contributions that you can bring in terms of your education, opinions, culture, ethnicity, race, sex, gender identity and expression, nation of origin, age, languages spoken, veteran’s status, colour, religion, disability, sexual orientation, and beliefs. 

For more information, please see our People and OD Strategy 2026

Smoke Free Policy: 

All of our hospitals operate a strict no smoking policy. Smoking cigarettes or tobacco products is not allowed on any of the grounds or in any of the buildings run by us. This applies to patients, staff, carers and visitors to Trust premises.

Our goal is to improve the health and wellbeing of everyone we care for and, by making sure that our NHS services are smoke-free, we benefit the health of people who use our services as well as the health of the people who work for us.

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