Business Continuity and Emergency Planning Officer

Business Continuity and Emergency Planning Officer

30 Hours per week (0.8fte)

Salary range = £44,362 - 48,398 (0.8fte) plus £1421 for the required out of hours standby commitment.

An exciting opportunity has arisen to work within East Sussex Fire & Rescue Service and undertake a key role in ensuring resilience with partner agencies in the County of East Sussex. The successful applicant will be seconded into the East Sussex Resilience and Emergencies Partnership (ESREP) based in County Hall, Lewes. The remit may involve some work for the Partnership working in a small team, The Service Emergency Planning Officer will play a key part in ensuring the Service fulfills its duties under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, namely emergency planning and business continuity.

This opportunity would suit somebody who is well organised and has experience and a good understanding of emergency planning, business continuity and knowledge of the Local Resilience Forum. You will be well supported in a friendly environment and have regular contact with staff across the service. The Partnership believe a more effective information flow will be able to be communicated to all staff, this includes information shared on our intranet, and there will be an opportunity for this role to play a key part in improving the availability of knowledge of Civil Contingencies and how this assists partner agencies.

Duties include but are not limited to:

• Responding to incident and events that require emergency planning support. This includes out of hours in line with the required on-call duty system as a member of the ESREP team. In return an additional annual payment of £1421 will be paid.
• Report to Assistant Director Risk Reduction primarily for ESFRS Business Continuity and Emergency Planning activity.
• Organise and deliver required business continuity tests and exercises.
• Updating and improving contingency and emergency plans in response to national and local learning.
• Working anywhere in the County of East Sussex (and Brighton & Hove) and attending occasional meetings in the South East Region and nationally.
• Attending a number of identified emergency planning courses

The contracted hours of work will be a total of 30 hours split across the working week between the hours of 9.00am – 4.30pm, although subject to agreement, there may be some flexibility to this.

The successful candidate will be educated to degree level or have considerable working knowledge of the Civil Contingencies Act and the Sussex Resilience Forum. You must have good communication skills with a customer service attitude and be able to use initiative, prioritise and organise your own workload. The successful candidate will be required to drive to different locations across Sussex and the wider Country, they will therefore require a full UK or EU Driving License.

Closing Date: 31/10/2026

Interview Date: w/c 16/11/26

East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service values diversity, promotes equality and challenges discrimination. We therefore welcome applications from all sections of the community. Please note that recruitment processes may be withdrawn or varied at short notice due to the Services’ Organisational Change Policy.

Our Service Purpose is:
Reducing Risk, Saving Lives – Together.

We do this through our Service Priorities:

1. Delivering our community offer

2. Delivering our enabling offer

3. Achieving financial sustainability

4. Sustaining a high performing workforce

5. Improving service performance

Our Service Values support our purpose and priorities by making sure the way we operate is guided by strong principles:

We willingly accept ACCOUNTABILITY, taking responsibility for our actions and decisions.

We have PRIDE in the service we…