Senior Administrator

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Joining #TeamNELFT means you'll become part of a welcoming and supportive working environment. We're CQC rated Good, and we want you to join us on the journey towards an Outstanding rating. NELFT has sites across North East London, Essex, Kent and Medway. We provide community and mental healthcare services to adults and children within these areas.

The Trust has award winning equality and diversity initiatives and staff health and wellbeing activities. We invest heavily in your development, because when you are valued and supported, we provide the best care to our patients. We are a Level 3 Disability Confident Leader, have been featured in the Working Families Top 10 Employers benchmark for five consecutive years, and we have achieved a Carers UK Level 1 Accreditation. Along with our staff networks and training opportunities, we work hard to embed a just and compassionate culture here at NELFT.

Find out more about NELFT careers and what makes our Trust a great place to work, in this video

Job overview

This is a great opportunity for anyone who is looking to develop their skills in becoming an Senior Administrator and supporting the Access Team Manager and Nursing team.

The role will allow you to gain a greater knowledge of the trust and Children and Adolescent Mental Health Service. The ideal candidate would be someone who is willing to learn, great IT skills especially using Outlook, good diary management, excellent typing skills and has had experience in minute taking. A full description of this role is detailed in the attached job description.

This is an office based post in the Borough of Waltham Forest.

The role will be to cover a career break and initially for 6 months from 5th January 2026.

Main duties of the job

Key Responsibilities:
• Provide a high quality confidential and comprehensive administrative service.
• Manage the diary and make decisions on behalf of the Manager in prioritising and re-arranging diary commitments.
• Open and sort incoming emails and other post in a timely manner, and where appropriate, personally prepare and send responses to correspondence.
• Operate bring forward and reminder systems.
• Undertake word processing of all documents to a high standard, in an agreed Trust style and using an appropriate referencing system.
• Utilise advanced level IT skills to create reports, spreadsheets and presentations.
• Develop and maintain electronic filing systems to ensure effective
access to relevant information.
• Prioritise own workload on a day-to-day basis to ensure that deadlines are met.
• Act as a central point of contact for external and internal callers, making judgements regarding appropriate dissemination of key information.
• Coordinate administrative arrangements relating to reporting requirements, to include the collation and presentation of documentation, preparing evidence and ensuring information is up to date.

Working for our organisation

Our Values 2025 - 2030

Working with our colleagues, patients and carers we have co-produced three new values that we aim to embed within our culture here at NELFT.

They are:

• We are kind.
• We are respectful.
• We work together with our communities.

These three values help us to strive to provide the best care by the best people.

Probationary Period

This post will be subject to a probationary period.

Starting with Us

NELFT places great importance on new starters being properly welcomed into the Trust. All new starters will join the Trust on the first Monday of each month and undertake a comprehensive induction of up to two weeks, including mandatory training, systems training and the allocation of equipment. As part of the process, new starters will also have the opportunity to meet the executive team, senior managers, and attend several drop-in sessions focusing on engagement, health and wellbeing, and key processes. The induction will be held at our head office in Rainham, Essex.

High Cost Area Supplement - Outer London

This post also attracts payment for High Cost Area Supplement of 15% of the basic salary (with a minimum of £4,313 to a maximum of £5,436 p.a. pro rata for part time).

High Cost Area Supplement - Fringe

This post also attracts payment for High Cost Area Supplement of 5% of the basic salary (with a minimum of £1,192 to a maximum of £2,011 p.a. pro rata for part time).

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Key Responsibilities:
• Provide a high quality confidential and comprehensive administrative service.
• Manage the diary and make decisions on behalf of the Manager in prioritising and re-arranging diary commitments.
• Open and sort incoming emails and other post in a timely manner, and where appropriate, personally prepare and send responses to correspondence.
• Operate bring forward and reminder systems.
• Undertake word processing of all documents to a high standard, in an agreed Trust style and using an appropriate referencing system.
• Utilise advanced level IT skills to create reports, spreadsheets and presentations.
• Develop and maintain electronic filing systems to ensure effective
access to relevant information.
• Prioritise own workload on a day-to-day basis to ensure that deadlines are met.
• Act as a central point of contact for external and internal callers, making judgements regarding appropriate dissemination of key information.
• Coordinate administrative arrangements relating to reporting requirements, to include the collation and presentation of documentation, preparing evidence and ensuring information is up to date.
• Oversee the facilitation and administration of meetings/panels, including: taking formal minutes that are intended for external review eg safeguarding, the production of agendas and coordination of papers, ensuring that key documents are available within defined timescales.
• Maintain up to date confidential personal staff files.
• Propose and implement changes to working practices to reflect the needs of the Service.
• Respond to ad-hoc requests for information from other Trust sources as agreed by the Manager.
• Ability to take dictation/transcribe from audio dictation, including medical reports.

Front of House
• Proactively maintain administrative systems as required to support the smooth running of the Directorate.
• Reception cover on an adhoc basis.
• Make administrative arrangements for ensuring new starters receive Trust and team inductions.
• Participate in project work.

Person specification

Customer service

Essential criteria

• Good telephone manner

Desirable criteria

• Office responsibilities

Administrative skills

Essential criteria

• 2 years of Administrative skills
• 2 years of secretarial experience

Desirable criteria

• 2 years of NHS experience
• Excellent verbal and written communication

Benefits

We believe in bringing your authentic and best self to work, in order to deliver the best care to our patients. We are committed to supporting our employees holistically. Here is a snapshot of what is on offer at NELFT:

• A long-standing and award-winning approach to equality and diversity with supportive networks for ethnic minority staff, staff with disabilities or long term/chronic conditions and LGBT staff.
• A commitment to supporting colleagues to achieve a work life balance, through flexible working opportunities and our effortsto support our working parents and carers. This has resulted in us being recognised as a 'Top 10 Family Friendly Employer' from the Working Families Charity.
• Proactive health and wellbeing support, including access to our employee assistance programme, staff psychological support, individual wellbeing conversations and a network of health and wellbeing ambassadors.
• Detailed information about our wellbeing and benefits offer can be found in this link.

As a flexible working friendly organisation, we want to be sure that you can work in a way that is best for us and for our patients, and for you. Speak to us about how we might be able to accommodate a flexible working arrangement whether that's a job share, part time hours or another flexible pattern.

Supporting our Armed Forces

We recognise the valuable contribution that the Armed Forces community make to our organisation. We have signed the Armed Forces Covenant and achieved Gold Award under the Armed Forces Employer Recognition Scheme. We have supportive policies, guaranteed interview schemes for veterans. reservists and military spouses and give additional leave to our Reservists so that they can attend their annual camp.

Equal opportunities employer

We are committed to equal opportunities and diversity and positively encourage applications from all sections of the community regardless of any protected characteristic.

We are a Disability Confident employer and have made the pledge to commit to employing more people with disabilities. If you require this application in another format i.e. Braille or audio tape please contact the recruitment team on 0300 300 1530 or email recruitment@nelft.nhs.uk.

Correspondence with us

You are advised to regularly check your emails (including any junk mail/spam folders) for correspondence related to this post.

As part of our recruitment process, we may be required to share information you provide on the application form with NHS Counter Fraud Authority (NHSCFA) and/or other organisations for the purpose of the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of fraud or any other unlawful activity affecting the NHS. We also use third party providers to check and verify your qualifications who may be contacting you on our behalf to verify the same.

Employer certification / accreditation badges

Applicant requirements

The postholder will have access to vulnerable people in the course of their normal duties and as such this post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service to check for any previous criminal convictions.

Application numbers

We reserve the right to close this vacancy early if we receive sufficient applications for the role. Therefore, we encourage you to submit your application as soon as possible to ensure consideration.

If you require any additional support during the application process please contact recruitment@nelft.nhs.uk. We are happy to make reasonable adjustments to support you throughout the recruitment journey.
Documents to download

• Job description (PDF, 600.3KB)
• Candidate Recruitment Pack (PDF, 671.2KB)
• Acceptable Use of AI in Recruitment (PDF, 3.9MB)