Head of Community Engagement

The Post

The Head of Community Engagement is responsible for fostering a safe, supportive, and positive campus and living environment for all students, staff, and visitors. The post holder provides strategic and operational leadership across campus community experience, residence life engagement, welfare support, behaviour management, security operations, and 24/7 campus response.

The role ensures that campus operations run smoothly and that the wellbeing, safety, and sense of belonging of students, staff and guests is central to service delivery. The post holder leads the campus Residence Life and Campus Support Teams including Security, Night Management and Portering teams, and works closely with partners across the institution to ensure early intervention, pro-active support and consistent responses to student conduct, safety concerns, and occupancy-related issues.

Description of Duties

Leadership and Service Management

• Provide strategic leadership for community experience, residence life, security and campus operations across the estate
• Lead, manage and develop the Residence Life Manager and Night Operations Manager, ensuring strong communication, accountability and performance standards
• Ensure campus operations function effectively 24/7, maintaining visibility and high service standards across teams and sites
• Promote a culture of continuous improvement, proactive engagement, and student-centred service delivery
• Responsible for performance development, HR processes, training and ongoing support for security, residence life, campus support and night management teams
• Foster a collaborative, supportive and inclusive team culture across day and night operations, promoting a visible, compassionate and values-based leadership approach

Community Development & Residence Life

• Oversee the development and delivery of the Residence Life programme, ensuring it supports wellbeing, academic transition, community cohesion and belonging
• Lead early intervention, pastoral support and proactive welfare engagement across residences
• Ensure reporting staff are trained to identify signs of vulnerability, risk, and welfare concerns, providing appropriate referrals and follow-up
• Responsible for overarching case management for student behaviour, wellbeing and conduct, assigning cases and ensuring appropriate follow-up, providing briefings to and escalating to the Director of Accommodation Services where appropriate
• Building strong working relationships with colleagues across the institution, ensuring that holistic approaches are taken to case management
• Establishing and overseeing the approach to occupancy breach follow-up, ensuring a fair, clear and supportive approach is taken, and being responsible for handling escalated occupancy breaches and breaches of the Code of Student Discipline, consulting with the Director of Accommodation Services as appropriate in addition to regular briefings and reports to the Director
• Supporting with the investigation and resolution of complaints, particularly complex and escalated complaints relating to campus and accommodation operations and experience
• Provide advice, guidance and escalation on serious incidents affecting residential communities and the campus estate

Campus Safety & Operational Planning

• Oversee security and campus support operations, ensuring a welcoming, responsive and proactive approach is taken to customer service and incident response
• Lead on Safe Zone and related security technologies/platforms
• Ensure effective deployment and scheduling of staff for security presence, emergency response and routine patrols
• Ensure all spaces are prepared, set-up and taken down
• Maintain and contribute to operational protocols for incident reporting, escalation and post-incident learning, at the direction of the Director of Accommodation Services
• Ensure compliance with safeguarding, health and safety, PREVENT obligations and emergency response requirements
• Support the Director of Accommodation Services in the creation of annual operational plans, service targets and performance indicators, engaging with Heads of different teams in accommodation to understand and support their operational plan…