Health Safety and Environmental (HSE) Business Partner

Job Description

Job Title: Health Safety and Environmental (HSE) Business PartnerContract Type: Permanent Salary: £49,699.82 (£54,763.04 is achieved after 12 months successful performance in the role)Working Hours: 35 hours per weekWorking Pattern: Monday to FridayLocation: Speke, Liverpool / Hybrid

If you share our values and are excited about making a significant impact at Riverside, please ensure you attach a current CV and covering letter. At Riverside we recruit to potential not just on skills and experience, so we encourage you to apply even if you don't meet all the essential criteria on the job description.

The difference you will make as Health Safety and Environmental (HSE) Business Partner

In this role you will Champion Health, Safety, and Environment across the Group, ensuring HSE risks are effectively managed to protect our People, our Customers, and our Homes. This role plays a critical part in delivering safety within a strategic risk area, supporting the Group’s ambition to create safe, sustainable environments for colleagues and customers, while safeguarding the places our customers live in and promoting responsible, sustainable practices.

About you

We are looking for someone with these below skills:

• Experience HSE assurance within a large, dispersed organisation.
• Demonstrable experience conducting excellent quality investigations and implementing control measures.

Why Riverside?

At Riverside, we’re a housing association with a difference – enhancing the everyday for all our customers. For 90 years, we’ve been revitalising neighbourhoods and supporting communities by providing the homes they need to live full, fulfilling and rewarding lives.

We have a portfolio of over 75,000 affordable residential and retirement homes across the UK. Our work ranges from homelessness services to social care, employment support to retirement living, and we need the best people on board to help us.

Working with us, you’ll enjoy:

• Competitive pay & generous pension
• 28 days holidays plus bank holidays
• Flexible working options available
• Investment in your learning, personal development and technology
• A wide range of benefits
• Development opportunities for the right candidate

Diversity and Inclusion at Riverside: 

We are inclusive. At Riverside, we value diversity in all its forms. We foster a workplace where all individuals are respected, empowered, and heard. Our commitment to inclusivity drives our success and enriches the lives of our customers and colleagues.

This role also falls under our Ethnic Diversity guaranteed interview scheme. If you are Ethnically Diverse and demonstrate you meet the minimum criteria for the role you will be guaranteed an interview.

Applications may close before the deadline, so please apply early to avoid disappointment.

Role Profile 

• Champion Health, Safety, and Environment across the Group, ensuring HSE risks are effectively managed to protect our People, our Customers, and our Homes. This role plays a critical part in delivering safety within a strategic risk area, supporting the Group’s ambition to create safe, sustainable environments for colleagues and customers, while safeguarding the places our customers live in and promoting responsible, sustainable practices.
• Provide strategic oversight in HSE governance, audit and assurance, ensuring robust frameworks are embedded and consistently applied to safeguard compliance, drive continuous improvement and uphold the highest standards across the group.
• Be the HSE support to colleagues at all levels in the assigned risk area to ensure they operate safely and understand their personal responsibility for themselves and their direct reports.
• Ensure all parts of the Group follow the Safety-First philosophy and adopt the Riverside safety operating model of Accountable Risk Leads (ARLs).
• Support Accountable Risk Leads in delivering against their risk framework.
• Support the delivery of assurance and audit frameworks both internally and externally to ensure that our HSE management system meets the highest standards.
• Regularly monitor the groups online accident book (SAW-IT system) and ensure business areas understand how to use it and adhere to the groups incident reporting policy. Ensure major incidents are escalated to the HSE Lead immediately and lead the oversight and response to major HSE incidents across the Group, ensuring robust investigations are conducted to identify root causes and drive continuous improvement.
• Deliver assurance reviews that confirm compliance with Group standards and regulatory requirements.
• Support the group in meeting its Legal obligations and that Group policies and procedures are known and adhered to.
• Provide ARLs with targeted HSE performance data to drive improvements, enable scrutiny, and hold risk owners to account, ensuring safety plans are in place and delivering impact
• Ensure that Risk Assessments are in place to protect our colleagues and customers.
• The role will report directly to the HSE Lead and will work across the designated risk area to develop and assist in the implementation and governance of all HSE strategies, plans, policies, procedures, guidance, KPIs, reports, records, and actions.

Role requires you to:

• Drive our Safety-First Culture across all parts of the Group, ensuring the safety of our Customers, our People, and our Homes are prioritized at every operational level, driving our golden thread of HSE through consistent behaviors, standards, and leadership.

• Plan, conduct, and report on comprehensive HSE audits and assurance reviews, identifying gaps, driving corrective actions, and ensuring transparent reporting to senior leadership and governance panels.

• Provide expert assurance advice to Accountable Risk Leads and senior stakeholders, enabling scrutiny, accountability, and continuous improvement in HSE performance.

• Oversee the integrity and effectiveness of risk assessments and registers, ensuring risks are clearly identified, controls are robust, and performance is monitored and reported in line with best practice.

• Proactively support ARLs in delivering their responsibility for their assigned risk area, providing competent advice, and helping them to establish robust health and safety good practices.

• Ensure risks are clearly identified and understood across assigned areas through robust risk assessments and registers, with effective controls in place, and ensure that performance and risk status are transparently reported through to the Safety-First Group and ARL Panels for oversight and assurance.

• Ensure the Group’s HSE management system and assurance activities meet ISO and legal standards, supporting external and internal audit processes and maintaining relevant accreditations.

• Oversee the use of Personal Safety devices and SAW-IT across assigned risk areas, alongside other key HSE KPIs, providing assurance, driving performance, and enabling continuous improvement.

• Conduct major accident and incident investigations, ensuring actions/ recommendations are implemented across assigned risk areas.

• Support assigned areas to embed environmental, sustainability, and health & safety requirements in line with ISO standards, ensuring that risks are effectively identified, managed, and monitored.

• Build effective relationships with colleagues at all levels ensuring they understand how to escalate issues and concerns or ask for support.

• Attend meetings as requested by the Directorate, to give updates and advise on all HSE matters.

• Support working groups associated with Health & Safety, such as Personal Safety and SAW-IT, contributing to the development and delivery of initiatives that strengthen our golden thread of HSE, ensuring consistent standards, shared learning, and continuous improvement across the Group

• Produce Strategic Safety Improvement Plans to continuously improve HSE across the Group.

• Produce HSE reports as requested by HSE Lead.

Cross-Team Working:

• Work closely with other HSE team members, MI and Data, Insurance and Business Continuity teams.
• Have positive relationships with assigned Executive Directors and Directors, Risk Areas and ARLs, and fully understand their risks and operational challenges.
• Support sponsors, ARLs, the Executive Team, and leaders to excel in HSE.
• Ensure excellent service for all employees and customers when providing advice, support and lessons learnt.

Other Information

• Represent Riverside’s interests and proactively engage with customer and external stakeholders.

Person specification

Essential

• Demonstrable experience in HSE governance, audit, and assurance within a large, dispersed organisation.
• Lead Auditing Qualification and substantial experience conducting HSE audits and assurance reviews.
• Major Incident Investigation Experience.
• Strong ability to analyse and report on HSE performance to governance bodies, driving accountability and continuous improvement.
• Demonstrable experience conducting excellent quality investigations and implementing control measures.
• Proven experience of influencing senior leaders to take ownership of risks.
• Demonstrable experience in conducting risk assessments and maintaining risk registers, with a working knowledge of risk management processes in day-to-day operations.
• Effective report writing and presentation skills.

Desirable

• Understanding the context of social housing (particularly TRG) and the challenges it faces.
• Experience supporting or leading external assurance processes, including ISO accreditation audits.
• Understanding of governance frameworks and assurance requirements within the social housing sector.
• Evidence of continued professional development.
• Experience of successfully implementing ISO standard management systems.
• Membership of a relevant professional organization
• Level 5/6 HSE qualification.
• Knowledge of relevant legislation and government regulations pertaining to HSE in Housing.