Emergency Planning Lead

Summary: At South East Water, keeping the water flowing for millions of customers requires world-class foresight, rapid tactical execution, and unwavering resilience. We are seeking an authoritative, visionary Emergency Planning Lead to take total organizational accountability for our Emergency Preparedness, Response, and Recovery (EPRR) framework. This role extends beyond managing plans; it is about leading culture, shaping strategy, and ensuring our operations withstand any challenge. As our subject matter expert, you will step to the forefront of our operational strategy, setting the direction, standards, and priorities that elevate our resilience while ensuring South East Water remains robust, agile, and fully compliant with all regulatory and legislative requirements. In this position, strategic leadership will be key as you head a dedicated team of Emergency Planners to establish clear priorities and long-term EPRR strategies. You will drive internal collaboration by partnering directly with the Ops Improvement Team, Alternative Water Team, and SEMD Lead to integrate localized tactical plans seamlessly into our master response strategy. Extending your reach beyond the organization, you will exercise external influence by serving as the face of South East Water across regional Local Resilience Forums (LRFs), actively contributing to area-specific water disruption plans, and driving the adoption of industry best practices. You will oversee regulatory governance to ensure complete, uncompromised compliance across all statutory emergency obligations, while playing a critical frontline role in brand restoration-enhancing operational resilience, minimizing incident impact, and actively rebuilding trust with external partners and local communities. To succeed, you will offer proven EPRR expertise as a seasoned professional with a strong track record in critical national infrastructure (CNI) or the utility sector. You will bring decisive command as a confident leader capable of providing clear, concise, and calm direction during high-pressure incidents. Furthermore, you will act as a skilled cross-functional negotiator, translating complex tactical data from specialized teams into actionable strategic frameworks, and demonstrate your background as a key stakeholder influencer with extensive experience building robust working relationships with external multi-agency partners, emergency services, and LRFs. Main responsibilities: Team Leadership & Delivery: Directly manage the Emergency Planning Team, overseeing performance and professional growth. Build capability within the Emergency Planning Team, using previous experience to coach and mentor as required. Provide wider business coaching, specifically on incident management and emergency response.Internal and external stakeholder management: This role will be responsible for building internal relationships with key stakeholders to build a collaborative response to incidents and emergency planning. This role will be responsible for working with Local Resilience Forums to ensure industry best practice is adopted at South East Water. The role will actively participate in LRF working groups, contributing towards area specific water disruption plans.Undertake incident reviews, identify areas for improvement and implement actions: This role will support our internal incident review process, working closely with the Operational Resilience and Security Manager to identify opportunities for improvement. This role will be responsible for ensuring improvement opportunities are recorded, implemented and tested.Develop, implement and own South East Water's emergency planning framework: This role will be responsible for aligning operational, tactical and strategic plans within our Incident and Emergency Plan. This role will be responsible for reviewing our existing emergency planning policies and where necessary updating. This role will be responsible for creating new emergency planning policies, and where possible aligning with the multi agency response approach.Internal incident management training: This role will be responsible for an ongoing programme of incident management training. This role will be responsible for developing training material for all roles on our incident management rota. This role will be responsible for ensuring the principles of Gold, Silver and Bronze Command are understood and implemented.Business Continuity planning: This role will be responsible for wider business continuity, by assessing potential threats and conducting impact assessments to inform business continuity plans. This role will be responsible for updating our existing business continuity plans and ensuring a clear line of sight to South East Water's Emergency Plan.You'll need: Skills / Qualifications / Experience Good standard of secondary education and able to demonstrate a good standard of numeracy and literacy skills. A formal qualification in incident management and or emergency planning would be advantageous. Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to engage diverse audiences and build strong working relationships. Highly organised, methodical and adept at managing time effectively. Able to simplify complex topics and issues to engage with a wider range of internal and external stakeholders. Proven ability to plan effectively and deliver against deadlines, even when facing significant obstacles. Willingness to undertake continuous professional development in emergency planning and incident management. Proven track record in managing teams, projects, or large-scale programmes. Proficiency as a technical author, capable of creating structured business templates and procedural documentation. Practical knowledge of emergency planning and incident response processes, including development and maintenance of plans and procedures. Experience working in emergency planning, business continuity or incident response. Ideally within the water industry or an operational environment. Awareness of the Security and Emergency Measures Direction (SEMD) and a working knowledge of the Civil Contingencies Act. Experience supporting or contributing to emergency exercises, post incident reviews and training.Employees are required to be flexible and to be prepared to perform duties and other tasks within their capabilities. The nature of our business is such that the contents of any job profile are subject to change from time to time. Grow a career with a meaningful purpose. We know the communities we serve are diverse. We recognise creativity comes from diversity not similarity. That's why we are enthusiastic about creating inclusion across age, race, gender, ethnicity, religion and identity. You will experience our dedication to equal opportunities and fair treatment for all: through your recruitment, employment and career progression with South East Water. Benefits package: Excellent Stakeholder pension scheme, up to 10% employer contribution. 5 weeks holiday plus bank holidays per annum, increasing to 6 weeks with length of service. Flexible annual leave policy to buy or sell holiday leave. Paid volunteering days. Cycle to work scheme. Health cash plan. Life assurance. Wellbeing related benefits.What can you expect from your recruitment? To apply for this position, please submit your CV on our career's website. It is necessary for you to have the legal right to work in the UK when you begin employment with South East Water. Additionally, as part of the employment offer, you will need to pass background, identity, and employment referencing checks.If this sounds like the opportunity you've been looking for, apply now! South East Water kindly asks that recruitment agencies refrain from submitting CVs to our employees or associates without explicit invitation from our HR Resourcing team. CVs sent on a speculative basis will not be acknowledged and will not assume any responsibility for fees or commissions in the event that we hire a candidate who applied directly or subsequently introduced by an instructed agency. Compensation package: Upto £60,000, plus £6,492.29 car allowance