Head of Catering Operations

We provide healthcare services to people living in Bridgend, Merthyr Tydfil and Rhondda Cynon Taf county borough areas, serving a population of around 450,000. We are ideally situated between Wales’s capital city, Porthcawl to the west, and the stunning scenery in the Brecon Beacons.

Our vision is to care for our communities and patients by preventing ill-health, promoting better health, providing excellent services and reducing the need for inpatient care wherever possible through the provision of strengthened home, primary and community care.

We value the diversity of our staff and welcome applications from people from protected groups under the Equality Act 2010, this specifically includes age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity/reassignment, race/nationality, religion/belief, disability, pregnancy and maternity and marriage and civil partnership.

Cwm Taf Morgannwg is a Living Wage Employer.

Please check your email account regularly. Successful applicants will receive all recruitment related correspondence via the email account registered on the application form.

All applicants are invited to apply in Welsh or English, and no preference will be given to applications submitted in either language.

Please be advised that there is a temporary top up for Bands 2 and 3 to reflect the incorporation of the top up to the living wage of £12.60 per hour - £24,638 per annum.

This temporary top up will be in place until the annual pay uplift for 2025/26 is confirmed

Job overview

The Head of Catering Operations is a senior member of the Facilities Leadership Team.

The role will be responsible for providing professional strategic leadership, management and operational accountability for:

• *Patient catering services across all health board sites
• *Retail catering outlets at all health board sites, and
• *CPU – a food manufacturing plant producing meals for the health board and other healthcare organisations across South Wales.

The post holder will deliver efficient and effective catering services and ensure robust performance management arrangements are in place to continuously deliver a high-quality, safe, cost effective service.

The post holder will be required to provide highly specialist knowledge to include, the development and implementation of all legislative Food Hygiene Standards and Hospital Food Standards e.g. The General Food Regulations 2004, Food Safety Act 1990, Food Hygiene Regulations 2006, (EC) 852/2004 and the All Wales Nutrition and Catering Standards for Food and Fluid Provision for Hospital Inpatients 2012.

The post holder will be expected to operate on the “on call”

Main duties of the job

The post holder will be responsible for:

• Developing and delivering catering, retail and CPU services that have customer and patient experience at their heart.
• Providing leadership to and the development of the catering, retail and CPU services teams, supporting the delivery of high quality and safe services.
• Shaping catering, retail and CPU services, ensuring suitable and sufficient governance arrangements are embedded, statutory requirements are met, and safe, responsive and cost effect services are delivered.
• Delivering services within existing budget allocations involving significant responsibility for financial management.
• Developing and delivering retail offerings that promote and enhance the commercial viability of the service.

While you will be based at Dewi Sant Health Park, the role offers hybrid working, allowing you to work flexibly from home and there will be a requirement to work from all CTM sites as needed to deliver the full responsibilities of the role

Working for our organisation

Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board is part of the NHS Wales family. Our Health Board provides primary, secondary and community health and wellbeing services to around 450,000 people living in three County Boroughs: Bridgend Merthyr Tydfil, and Rhondda Cynon Taf.

We live by our core values:

• We listen, learn and improve
• We treat everyone with respect
• We all work together as one team

We are a proud local employer; around 80% of our 15000 workforce live within our region, making our staff not only our lifeblood of our organisation but of the diverse communities that we serve.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

You will be able to find a full Job description and Person Specification attached within the supporting documents or please click Apply now to view in Trac

Person specification

Qualifications

• Educated to Master’s level in a Catering, Hospitality or Food related discipline
• Advanced Food Hygiene/Level 4
• Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) Level 4

• Evidence of continuous development and willingness to learn new catering and food systems technologies

Knowledge

• Extensive and expert specialist knowledge across food manufacturing, Hospital Catering services and/or Retail food services.
• Knowledge of catering and food data analytics production to develop meaningful data information to support management decisions and streamline operational processes
• Specialist and expert knowledge of the following disciplines:
• Food Hygiene Standards
• FSA • HACCP
• UK Legislation relating to Allergens and Guidance
• Food Quality Management Systems/ISO Accreditation
• Industry Quality Standards

• Knowledge of food labelling Legislation

Experience

• Demonstrable experience of dietary requirements, menu planning, recipe development, food supplier management across large organisations
• Management experience in a fast paced and complex multisite 24/7 catering and/or food manufacturing operation
• Experience of policy formulation

skill and attributes

• Ability to manage multiple demands to tight timescales

• Welsh speaker (level 1) or willingness to work towards this level

If you are eligible for the Health and Care visa, application costs are lower and you do not need to pay the annual Immigration Health Surcharge.