Committee Officer

Job description

Job responsibilities

Key responsibilities

Meetings management

To forward plan meeting dates and associated arrangements in conjunction with the Licensing Manager, liaising with members, advisers and venues as needed.

To work with the Licensing Manager, members, external legal (or other) advisers and particularly Chairs to ensure clarity of agendas, quoracy, conflicts management and well run meetings.

To liaise with staff submitting papers for forthcoming meetings, to manage the flow of business to designated committees and ensure decisions (affecting patients and/or the licence status of centres) will be made in a timely way.

To produce meeting bundles, ensuring these are of a high level of quality, are quality assured by the Licensing Manager (or, in their absence, another committee officer), and are provided on time to committee members and other attendees.

To make all necessary practical arrangements for meetings, including room bookings, catering, audio-visual facilities, raising requisitions in WAP, ensuring advisers are booked as required etc.

To identify any substantive issues of fact, policy or statute within those papers and their recommendations that might inhibit the Committees decision-making ability, rectifying, seeking further information or escalating queries where appropriate.

Provide a high quality service to all designated meetings, ensuring that arrangements and venue information has been provided to attendees, and that quoracy and conflicts have been confirmed and managed in advance.

To ensure that the Standard Licensing Pack, relevant decision trees and any other necessary materials are available for the committee throughout the meeting, pointing out key reference documents to the Chair as appropriate.

Attend all designated licensing meetings to draft accurate minutes in a timely way after the meeting (in accordance with the key performance targets for each committee) for review by the Licensing Manager, the meetings Legal Adviser and any expert advisers present, and then to manage the process of discussing and finalising minutes by the members.

Take responsibility for clearing rooms at the end of the meeting and keeping confidential documents secure at all times.

To ensure that licences, documentation and (where relevant) legal notices are issued correctly and on time, working with the Legal Adviser for the relevant meeting, and to follow up with PRs and/or inspectors when formal acceptance of documents is required.

Provide resilience for other members of the Licensing team, as directed by the Licensing Manager, for example to cover annual leave or sick leave.

Licensing information management

To work with the Licensing Manager to conduct regular audits of the information in Epicentre, the HFEAs statutory register of licences, to assure the accuracy and completeness of centres licensing documentation.

To ensure that accepted offer licences are activated on their due date, so that centres licences do not lapse.

To manage the safe custody and filing of the official records of the HFEAs licensing committee business, maintaining accurate and up-to-date records which can be accessed by the organisation as required.

To be the first port of call for day-to-day licensing queries, both internal and external, and to escalate those of a more serious or complex nature to line management as appropriate.

To provide performance information relating to the number of items considered, the time taken to approve minutes, and other required statistics, for corporate reporting purposes.

To use current, up-to-date templates, Standard Operating Protocols SOPs and other standard documentation to ensure that work is delivered correctly and consistently across the licensing team, and to participate in and engage with the updating of standard documentation when relevant.

From time to time, administering the processing system for all applications to the Licensing Officer.

To work with other HFEA staff on projects that involve licensing, providing expert input and advice when appropriate, reporting back to the wider Licensing team on new developments, and working as a member of the project team to implement required licensing outcomes.

Communication

Ensure that certain reports and all licensing minutes are published on the HFEAs website in accordance with the HFEAs publication policy, ensuring that all published information is referred to the Licensing Manager for quality assurance, and that any publication problems are raised with other teams and followed up.

To identify action points arising from the meetings and ensure that these are communicated to the appropriate staff, where relevant scheduling a meeting to ensure that actions are understood and implemented.

To support committee members and advisers with respect to Committee business, responding to queries or referring them to other staff as appropriate.

Other requirements

Processing requisitions, payments, expenses and goods received, through the HFEAs finance system WAP.

Providing administrative support to the Licensing Manager and external lawyers for occasional representations and appeals hearings.

Providing general administrative and quality management support to the Licensing Manager.

To assist other staff in the team as and when needed so as to provide mutual cover for example during holiday or sickness and seamless support for all licensing meetings.

To undertake such other tasks and responsibilities as may be required from time to time.

Person Specification

Managing work

Essential

• Strong time management skills and an ability to be flexible and proactive, and to use initiative to prioritise workload.
• Excellent organisational skills and record keeping, using supplied software and systems skilfully.
• Ability to maintain concentration and accuracy at times of peak workload.
• Ability to adhere to standard procedures and templates.
• Personal resilience and an ability to remain calm under pressure.

Knowledge

Essential

• Ability to understand complex topics, recognise potential legal or governance risks and issues, and capture decisions clearly, so as to enable excellent, clear minute writing in relation to complex quasi-legal and scientific subjects.
• Excellent interpersonal skills in order to work across teams and liaise with board members and senior staff
• Excellent written communication skills, with a track record of producing clear minutes to tight deadlines.

Desirable

• Detailed knowledge of a statutory licensing regime.

Qualifications

Essential

• Professional minuting or governance-specific qualification or relevant experience.

Experience

Essential

• Significant experience of minuting formal committees in a public body.
• Experience of working in a regulatory setting where consistency and accuracy in committee papers and minutes are paramount at all times.
• Experience of servicing committees that use formal decision-making tools (such as decision trees, standard reference packs, standing orders, or similar) in order to conduct their business.
• Experience of and ability in dealing with sensitive and highly confidential matters.
• Experience of working closely with senior staff and board members, and the confidence to ask questions if need be during meetings, in order to clarify requirements for the minutes.
• Experience of using, and accurately maintaining records, databases and spreadsheets.

Desirable

• Experience of producing and issuing formal legal notices or licences.
• Experience of minuting committees whose subject matter is clinical, legal and/or ethical in nature.
• Experience of working in a team of people with differing job roles.
• Experience of active participation in projects.

Employer details

Employer name

Human Fertilisation & Embryology Authority

Address

2nd Floor

2 Redman Place

London

E20 1JQ

Employer's website

https://www.hfea.gov.uk/ (Opens in a new tab)