The starting salary for this role is £29,844 per annum for working 36 hours per week.

The Highways Operations and Infrastructure group are excited to be recruiting a Highways Customer Officer.

Your work base will be at Merrow Depot in Guildford, but as a Highway Customer Officer you will be required to work across the entire county where a need arises.

You will also be able to work from home to complete the admin part of the role when not out on site visits. You will be one of a team of 14 Highway Customer Officers along with 2 Senior Highway Customer Officers.

About us

The Highways Operations and Infrastructure group in the Highways and Transport Service provides excellent customer service in order to meet the demands of over 80,000 customer queries per year. Based in the Technical Support and Communication Team, the Highway Customer Officer is the local face of the service, acting as the focal information point for customer enquiries and licence applications. The role is interesting, challenging and varied.

About the role

We are looking for a Highways Customer Officer (HCO) who will undertake a range of highway related works, including going out in response to customer calls for service on a daily basis.

Enquiries may involve conducting site suitability surveys for vehicle crossovers, tree and shrub concerns, or other highway issues such as defect and highway safety inspections. HCOs are responsible for managing their own workloads and ensuring customer response times are met.

Work will include a mixture of office work and visits to sites and customers throughout the year. The work split is likely around 75% out on site and 25% office/home based. You will be required to work in an open office environment on a weekly basis to ensure close relationships and working bonds are maintained with other service teams.

About you

This job is suited to a huge variety of past careers, as examples we have HCO's who were previous armed forces personnel, emergency service workers, lectures, hospitality managers, counsellors, engineers, customer service officers, civil enforcement officers.

To be shortlisted for interview your application and personal statement will clearly evidence:

• A good standard of spoken communication and personal presentation
• Be able to have robust and sometimes difficult conversations face to face with customers
• A good working knowledge and ability to use IT equipment and Microsoft Office suite such as Word, Excel, Outlook
• A working knowledge and interest or experience in Highway Works
• Experience of providing excellent customer service, both remotely and in a face-to-face environment
• Ability to manage workloads and deal with conflicting priorities
• A willingness to travel around the county when necessary, a vehicle will be provided for these journeys and left at your place of work overnight

You will need to achieve a competency-based training record within the 6-month probation period and have been successful in all categories.

The job advert closes at 23:59 on 25/06/2023.

Interviews will be face-to-face in Guildford and be of three parts, completed in one session of around 2 hours:

1. Using an IT system to complete a task.
2. Demonstrating ability to use a risk assessment based on examples.
3. A face-to-face interview.

We look forward to receiving your application, please click on the apply online button below to submit.

Benefits

From flexible working to job sharing we are committed to providing a healthy work life balance. For more information about the wide variety of benefits you can take advantage of please visit the advert on the employer site.

Our Commitment

Surrey County Council is proud to be a Disability Confident Employer. A guaranteed interview will be offered to all disabled applications where:

• The candidate has evidenced the minimum criteria for the role through their application
• The candidate has chosen to share that they have a disability on the application form

Our application form and onboarding process will provide an opportunity to request any reasonable adjustments for the interview and/or the role.

We want to be an inclusive and diverse employer reflecting the community we serve and particularly welcome applications from all underrepresented groups.