Programme Manager - Housing And Land

The Housing and Land directorate is responsible for the Mayor’s plans to deliver new and improved homes and strong communities. Working closely with boroughs and partners, we manage the Mayor’s housing investment and grant programmes and Land and property assets to support the building of affordable homes, job creation and regeneration. 

About the team

The Operational Policy and Performance Team is part of the Investment and Operations Unit in the Housing and Land directorate, led by Rachael Hickman as Assistant Director Investment and Operations.

Operational Policy and Performance works across the full breadth of Housing and Land’s work. It is a truly collaborative, multi-disciplinary team working with our delivery teams, programmes teams and policy team to support and enable everyone in the directorate to deliver effectively, consistently and within our GLA governance procedures. 

Key areas of responsibility for the team include:

• Directorate and corporate-level management and reporting of: budget (annual budget: circa £116m revenue and £1.5bn capital), strategic risk, and performance.
• Translating policy into delivery by creating and enabling the appropriate processes and contracting including overseeing the establishment of processes for assessing and tracking compliance against funding criteria and ensuring consistency of application of criteria across multiple funding streams and in contracts.
• Oversight of the directorate information and records management processes.
• Oversight and management of the business requirements for the GLA’s bespoke grant and project management system (OPS).
• Co-ordination of cross-directorate corporate activity such as tracking of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Action Plans, corporate apprentice programmes etc.

It is a really exciting time to join this team as we are growing in capacity and remit, picking up a large part of the directorate and corporate coordination and programme management. There is a significant amount of change happening in the GLA generally, and this team will be at the forefront of leading and embedding that change.

About the role 

This is a newly created role in the Operational Policy and Performance Team and reports to the newly created role of the Senior Programme Co-ordinator.

We are looking for someone who combines excellent data analysis and manipulation with strong reporting, communicating and influencing skills.

Housing and Land delivers a wide range of projects and programmes including: the £4bn Affordable Homes Programme, a c.£700m recoverable investment portfolio, a 635 hectare land and property portfolio and London’s cladding remediation funding programmes. We also oversee a number of specialist and supported housing funds, and rough sleeping funds and services. 

Your role is to support the Senior Programme Co-ordinator in the delivery of coherent and consistent budget, risk and performance management of these at a directorate level. You will also support and lead elements of the co-ordination of corporate GLA activities that need to be embedded and delivered across the directorate. Examples of these include co-ordination and tracking of our Directorate EDI Action Plan, or tracking of our Learning and Development spend.

The GLA is currently reviewing our approach to grant making and programme management and it is anticipated that this role will provide input from Housing and Land’s into that workstream to ensure the outcomes continue to work for the directorate to enable us to build on our exceptional grant delivery and programme management to date.

What your day will look like  No two days are the same, but will include:

• Leading on all aspects of monitoring, reporting and programme management including risk management, of the directorate’s Housing and Land programmes.
• Producing management reports for internal and external boards, working groups or stakeholders to manage and monitor directorate budgets, performance, forecasts and risk analysis against delivery.
• Assisting in modelling and creating investment programmes in line with the Mayor’s Housing Strategy and future policy direction.
• Co-ordinating information and analysis to enable effective contract management on existing and new programmes with investment partners.
• Managing the monitoring and reporting of spend, receipts, outputs, outcomes and impact achievements of the directorate’s programmes to Directorate Management Team and other corporate teams.
• Leading on the development of policy, programmes, bespoke reports and tools to support delivery and advanced use of data analysis tools (such as Power BI, Excel etc) to an advanced level to produce reports and systems that will assist staff to meet targets.
• Ensuring records of land and property assets are maintained and annual valuation operations are carried out in line with guidance and to time.
• Inputting into corporate grant and programme management workstreams to ensure the outcomes continue to work for the directorate to enable us to build on our exceptional grant delivery and programme management to date.

Staff at the GLA are working in our offices 2-3 days per week and GLA leaders need to be accessible and visible to their teams. A good balance of time spent working remotely, in the office together with colleagues and with partners across London is an important aspect of the role. We promote flexible approaches to working and try to ensure an inclusive and supportive environment that enables our staff to be successful. This may include reasonable adjustments or other flexibilities around working hours and locations.

Skills, knowledge and experience 

To be considered for the role you must meet the following essential criteria:

• Proficient in the use of IT systems including advanced experience of using Excel and Power BI or other equivalent data analysis tools.
• Experience of working with large investment programmes or similar.
• Planning and organising (competency level 3)* - thinking ahead, managing time, priorities and risk, and developing structured and efficient approaches to deliver work on time and to a high standard.
• Problem solving (competency level 3)* - analysing and interpreting situations from a variety of viewpoints and finding creative, workable and timely solutions.
• Communicating and influencing (competency level 2)* - presenting information and arguments clearly and convincingly so that others see us as credible and articulate, and engage with us.