Head of Emergency Preparedness, Resilience and Response: Sponsorship Available

University Hospital Southampton NHS Trust

Job summary

University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust is delighted to offer a fantastic opportunity to work with us.

Job Title: Head of Emergency Preparedness, Resilience and Response

Contract Type: Permanent

Please be advised that this vacancy may close earlier than stated if we receive a large number of applications.

This is an exciting opportunity to join our team as Head of Emergency Preparedness, Resilience and Response (EPRR) at University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, providing Trust-wide leadership to protect patients, sustain essential care and strengthen organisational resilience.

You will shape how UHS prepares for, responds to and recovers from significant incidents, ensuring resilience informs strategic decisions, service development and everyday operations. This senior role combines professional leadership and executive advice with the judgement to support effective decisions during disruption.

Main duties of the job

Reporting to the Associate Director of Operations, you will lead and develop the EPRR team and programme of work, and act as the principal specialist adviser to the Accountable Emergency Officer, Executive Team and senior clinical and operational leaders. You will build the relationships and confidence needed to influence decisions, challenge constructively and establish shared responsibility for preparedness across the Trust.

Your remit will encompass incident response and command, business continuity, evacuation and shelter, and preparedness for other significant threats. Working with senior colleagues across clinical services, operations, estates, digital and security, you will ensure these arrangements are coherent, proportionate and capable of supporting safe care under pressure.

You will strengthen leadership capability through training and exercising, ensure learning leads to sustained organisational improvement, and provide authoritative advice during incidents and recovery. Through robust EPRR assurance, you will give senior leaders a clear understanding of the Trust’s readiness, material risks and priorities requiring their attention.

Representing UHS with NHS partners, emergency services, local authorities and wider resilience networks, you will influence joint preparedness and ensure the Trust’s responsibilities, capabilities and dependencies are understood within the wider system.

Person Specification

Qualifications, knowledge and experience

Essential

  • Educated to Master’s level or equivalent senior specialist experience in emergency planning, resilience, business continuity or a related discipline
  • Evidence of continued professional development in leadership, emergency preparedness, resilience, incident management or business continuity
  • Highly specialist knowledge of the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, NHS England EPRR Framework, NHS EPRR Core Standards and annual assurance requirements
  • Significant senior experience of leading EPRR, emergency planning, incident response or business continuity in a complex, service-critical organisation
  • Experience of developing, reviewing and assuring incident response plans, emergency plans, risk-specific plans and command arrangements
  • Experience of maintaining assurance evidence, leading audit or self-assessment and preparing reports for senior governance forums
  • Experience of business impact analysis, business continuity planning and Business Continuity Management System development or assurance
  • Experience of planning and delivering training, exercising, communications tests, lessons learned and improvement programmes
  • Experience of working with multi-agency partners, including NHS partners, emergency services, local authorities, Local Resilience Forum or Local Health Resilience Partnership arrangements
  • Experience of managing staff, performance, development and service improvement at senior level
  • Experience of managing budgets, resources and delegated programmes of work
  • Ability to work under pressure, interpret complex information, make sound recommendations and provide confident advice during significant operational disruption

Desirable

  • Formal emergency planning, resilience, civil contingencies or business continuity qualification
  • Business Continuity Institute, ISO 22301, incident command or JESIP-related training
  • Programme or project management qualification or demonstrable equivalent experience
  • Experience within an acute NHS trust, major trauma centre or large teaching hospital environment
  • Experience developing digital or Microsoft 365 based assurance, business continuity or resilience management tools
  • Knowledge of NHS operational pressures, hospital command structures and system-wide escalation arrangements

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

Certificate of Sponsorship

Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website (Opens in a new tab).

From 6 April 2017, skilled worker applicants, applying for entry clearance into the UK, have had to present a criminal record certificate from each country they have resided continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the past 10 years. Adult dependants (over 18 years old) are also subject to this requirement. Guidance can be found here Criminal records checks for overseas applicants (Opens in a new tab).

Closing Date: 4 October 2026

To apply for this job please visit apps.trac.jobs.