Commissioning Manager

This is a Gloucestershire County Council job.
 

• Job Title:                           Commissioning Manager, Care Academy
• Job Location:                     Shire Hall, Block 5, 4th Floor 
• Salary:                              £48,226 - £51,356 per annum
• Hours per Week:                37.00 
• Contract Type:                   Permanent 
• Closing Date:                    05/07/2026 
• Job Requisition Number:    14318 
• This post is not open to job share

Are you an experienced commissioning professional ready to lead a high-profile, innovative programme that will transform adult social care workforce development?

We are seeking a dynamic Commissioning Manager to lead the development and delivery of Gloucestershire’s new Care Academy, a system-wide initiative designed to strengthen recruitment, retention, and quality across the adult social care sector.

About the Role

This role is central to delivering a unified approach to workforce development, bringing together training, career pathways, digital learning, and provider support into a single, accessible offer for paid and unpaid carers.

You will oversee programme delivery across multiple workstreams, including digital platform development, learning pathways, credentialing (Training Passport), and provider engagement. The role requires strong leadership, system collaboration, and the ability to drive innovation at scale.

Working closely with senior leaders, providers, partners, and system stakeholders, you will ensure the Care Academy delivers meaningful outcomes, including improved workforce stability, higher-quality care, and greater accessibility to training and development opportunities.

You will ensure the Care Academy responds to the evolving training and development needs of the adult social care workforce, including designing inclusive and accessible pathways that support new entrants and enable progression into specialist, supervisory, and management roles across the sector. A key focus of the role will be to help attract, develop and retain a new generation of care professionals, including younger people, by promoting care as a valued, rewarding and long-term career.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the design, development, and delivery of the Gloucestershire Care Academy programme, ensuring alignment with system-wide workforce priorities.
• Manage complex commissioning programmes that support strategic workforce development, ensuring effective planning, delivery, and measurable impact.
• Oversee the development and implementation of digital learning solutions, including a learning platform, structured training pathways, and a credentialing system (Training Passport).
• Ensure alignment with Skills for Care frameworks and wider national workforce strategies, embedding best practice across all initiatives.
• Lead robust governance processes, including business case development, risk management, programme reporting, and assurance frameworks.
• Oversee procurement, contract management, and supplier relationships for digital and learning solutions, ensuring value for money and high-quality delivery.
• Coordinate and influence cross-system stakeholders, including NHS partners, adult social care providers, voluntary and community sector (VCS) organisations, and education partners.
• Drive provider engagement and adoption across a diverse adult social care market, ensuring accessibility and uptake of learning and development offers.
• Use data, insight, and performance metrics to monitor outcomes, demonstrate impact, and inform continuous improvement.
• Act as a subject matter expert in workforce development, digital learning, and commissioning practice, providing strategic advice and leadership.
• Identify and respond to current and future workforce skills needs, ensuring training provision is relevant, accessible, and aligned to sector priorities.
• Work collaboratively with partners to attract new entrants, particularly younger people, into adult social care through clear entry routes, early careers pathways, and progression opportunities.
• Support and deliver initiatives that improve workforce retention, including continuous professional development, career pathway visibility, and recognition of skills and experience.
• Ensure that learning and development offers are inclusive, flexible, and adaptable, supporting individuals at all career stages, including those new to care.
  
  

About You

You will be a confident and experienced commissioning professional with a passion for improving outcomes in adult social care and workforce development.

You will have:

• Significant experience in commissioning complex programmes, ideally within adult social care or workforce development
• Strong programme and project management skills, with experience delivering large-scale transformation
• Experience in digital transformation, learning platforms, or workforce development initiatives
• Excellent stakeholder engagement skills, with the ability to influence across systems
• Strong commercial awareness, including procurement and contract management

• Ability to use data and insight to drive decision-making and demonstrate impact
• A strong understanding of workforce challenges within adult social care, including recruitment, retention, and the need to attract and support younger and new entrants to the sector

Our values are at the heart of everything we do and how we treat each other. They provide essential guiding principles about the way that we work and set the tone for our culture, and identify what we, as an organisation, care about. Read more about our values on our website.

If you hold the same behaviours and approach, then we want to hear from you! In exchange, we will provide you with full training and support to help you succeed in your role!

About the Care Academy

The Care Academy is a transformative programme designed to address critical workforce challenges in adult social care, including vacancy rates, workforce turnover, and inconsistent access to training.

The Care Academy will play a key role in reshaping perceptions of care careers, particularly amongst younger people, by promoting clear, modern and flexible career pathways supported by high-quality training and development. It will help position adult social care as an attractive and sustainable career choice, supporting long-term workforce resilience across the sector.

It will provide:

• A single, countywide digital platform for learning and development
• Clear career pathways combined with structured career progression and leadership development, enabling individuals to move from entry-level roles through to supervisory, specialist, and management positions. This will include:

• • Defined progression routes from care roles into team leadership, service management, and strategic roles
  • Access to accredited qualifications and leadership development programmes aligned to Skills for Care standards
  • Targeted development for aspiring and first-line managers, supporting emerging leaders across the sector
  • Opportunities to build skills in people management, supervision, quality assurance, and service improvement
  • Recognition of prior learning and experience through the Training Passport, supporting progression across roles and employers
  • Ongoing continuous professional development (CPD) to sustain progression into senior and specialist roles
    
    

By bringing together innovation, workforce development, and system collaboration, the Care Academy will play a vital role in improving outcomes for carers, providers, and the people they support across Gloucestershire.

About us

This is a great time to join Gloucestershire County Council, as Adult Social Care is on an exciting innovation journey, which focuses our approach into being more creative, strengths-based and person-centred, to ensure that we work together to ‘Make the Difference’ to our local communities. 

Gloucestershire County Council provides the following rewards package in return for your hard work: 

• Regular formal and informal support
• Safe, supportive and positive working environment with regular, robust supervision
• Accredited post-qualified training opportunities, enabling you to develop your skills
• Access to mandatory training and additional topical bi-annual workshops.
• Access to our Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) that provides free, confidential, counselling and advice for employees, available 24 hours a day, online and by telephone.
• Gloucestershire Salary Sacrifice Green Car Scheme (T&C's apply)
• Links to employee networks such as Prism (LGBT+) network and the Young Employees Network.
• Annual leave up to 30.5 days after 5 years employment
• Access to the Local Government Pension Scheme
• Staff discount scheme that offers access to great savings including discounts with major supermarket chains and high street retailers
• Cycle to work Scheme

We’re closer than you think

We are an easy commute from many locations, view our commuting times map to see what we mean. Start your journey today!

Applying

Please write your application with consideration for the essential criteria in the Job Profile which you will find in the Additional Information section below. This should include examples of why you should be considered and cover the experience, skills and knowledge that you would bring to the post.

For an informal discussion, please, contact ASCrecruitment@gloucestershire.gov.uk to arrange a convenient time for a call back. To start your journey with us, click ‘Apply now’ today!

Additional Information:

The interviews will be held on July 14th and/or 15th. 

To access the Job Profile for this role, please follow the link below:

Commissioning Manager Job Profile

The council is not currently able to offer sponsorship in this role. Candidates will need to have right to work that enables them to commit to at least 6 months employment. Right to work is not transferable from a sponsored role held with another employer. 

Gloucestershire County Council is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people or vulnerable adults and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.

 
We want to be an employer of choice, attracting and retaining excellent people to work for us, so that we can best serve all of Gloucestershire’s diverse communities.  Our promise to you is that we will provide an inclusive and supportive working environment that enables you to bring your whole self to work and realise your full potential.

It is a legal requirement, under the Immigration Act 2016, that anyone appointed to a ‘customer facing role’ must be able to demonstrate an ability to fulfil all spoken aspects of the role with confidence in fluent English.

Hybrid working arrangements are available for the majority of our roles, giving teams the opportunity to work in a way that suits them, balancing service need and individual choice, with a mix of both remote and office working.

We reserve the right to close this vacancy early due to the volume of applications received. If you are interested in applying, we encourage you to submit your application as early as possible.

If you are an Internal applicant and consider yourself to have a disability* as per the Equality Act (2010), please declare this in an email to recruitment@gloucestershire.gov.uk, as this is NOT currently covered in the application due to a technical error.    By providing this information, you can choose to be considered for a guaranteed interview under our Disability Confident pledge if you meet all essential criteria. It also enables the recruiting manager to arrange any reasonable adjustments you may need during the process.    

*a disability is defined as: a physical or mental impairment, which has a substantial and long-term (more than 12 months) adverse effect on a person’s ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.  

Applications from any Gloucestershire County Council's employees who are currently on the redeployment register or at risk of redundancy will be considered first at shortlisting stage.