Director of Highways & Transport – AR

Director of Highways & Transport – Essex County Council

Temporary, Full Time

£900 per day (Umbrella, Inside IR35)

Location: Chelmsford, Essex

Closing Date
: 8th March 2026

We are seeking an experienced leader for an initial temporary period of 6 months, who can provide strong on‑site visibility approximately two days per week, or as required. The ideal candidate for the role of Director of Highways and Transport will be commercially astute and highly experienced in managing large-scale highways services, preferably within a client‑side contract environment, through business change and/or contract implementation.

The incumbent Director of Highways & Transport has been seconded to ensure delivery of the procurement of the Council’s replacement Highways maintenance contract. This is the largest contract in the Council and the largest of its type in England. ECC now requires an experienced and highly motivated interim Service Director to run all BAU aspects of the service and to lead the planning work required to prepare for disaggregation of the Transport Authority function to the newly created Greater Essex Combined County Authority and to plan for the disaggregation of the Highways Authority function to the new Unitary Authorities, as determined by MHCLG.

This is expected to be 3, 4 or 5 new councils in place by April 2028, with MHCLG expected to make the ‘minded to’ decision by 31 March 2026.

It is therefore vital that the interim Director is fully conversant with leading and planning change; ensuring tight contractual compliance in a mature and well performing partnership contract with the incumbent provider, Ringway Jacobs; working collaboratively with elected members of all parties, as we enter an all-out local election in May 2026; the leadership of the Integrated Passenger Transport Unit, including working with Education colleagues to manage the safe delivery of Home to School Transport in a financially challenging market;

ensuring delivery of a £24m BSIP programme; collaborating with DfT, National Highways; MHCLG and Homes England on interventions to improve the capacity and safety on the A12, following the government’s decision to cancel the widening scheme, lead on ensuring our Highways capital programme is delivered in accordance with member priorities on time and within budget; delivering the Local Transport Plan and the published commitments in our strategic plan:
Everyone’s Essex. You will also lead the hand back of the A130 PFI contract.

You will need to be a seasoned political and commercial operator with excellent leadership, communication, planning, technical, financial management, safety focus and people engagement and motivation skills with a keen eye for performance. You will have a track record of leading a Highways and Transport function of similar scale and complexity and will need to have low ego, as this role is part of a high performing team of Service Directors, all focused on delivering BAU, delivering a challenging MTRS, and planning for LGR and devolution.

In other words, this is an exceptional opportunity to make a significant difference to the people of Essex and to bring strength to the Council’s senior leadership.

This leader is passionate about Highways and Transport, the need to keep our Highway Network safe and functional, to develop and deliver new infrastructure to accompany economic growth and enable people to travel safely and sustainably whether by foot, cycle, private or public motorised and non‑motorised transport.

Partnership working with private sector providers delivering muti‑millions of pounds of services and schemes is a significant part of this role, but equally important are the relationships with our District, Borough, Parish and City Councils, our Essex Unitary Partners and Central Government. Therefore, the leader will need to take an effective commercial and innovative approach to how we maintain and develop our highways and transport services and infrastructure whilst being sensitive to differing expectations and needs or different stakeholders.

Acting as the Authority’s Senior Responsible Officer on Highways and Transport matters this…