Catering assistant jobs in central london, greater london

Thames Chase Community Forest was established in 1990 and covers an area of 98 square miles on the edge of east London and south-west Essex. Thames Chase Trust welcomes around 65,000 visitors per year to the Forest Centre complex. The architecturally acclaimed Visitor Centre is the information hub for the entire Community Forest and includes a cafe, shop, and public toilets. The complex also includes a 17th century barn, original stable block, refurbished Education Room, and farm cottages.

Our dedicated and friendly Forest Centre team seeks to provide the best possible visitor experience and to continue to develop and grow the complex. You will manage volunteers and five members of staff focussed on the Forest Centre complex. The staff team includes four Forest Centre Assistants and one Forest Centre Caretaker. You will be further supported by our Communications and Media Officer, Finance Officer, and Administration Officer. You will also work closely with the Progammes Team whose focus is project delivery across the Community Forest.

Role Description - What will you do?

People

You will bring this spectacular place closer to the hearts of visitors, our local communities and our many partners and you will lead on facilities, retail, catering (outsourced), visitor experience, membership, and volunteer teams. 

You will show initiative in developing the visitor experience through events, guiding, informing, and reinforcing the Thames Chase Plan, brand and values.

You will need to be able to promote the natural and cultural heritage of landscapes.

You will be familiar with the use of professional and social media and will need to be an exceptional communicator and an inspiring manager for an enthusiastic and knowledgeable team of staff and volunteers.

You will know just how to get the very best out of everyone and to support and motivate the team. There are set targets for income, and you will be responsible for ensuring that your team meets these.

You will lead the development, integration and delivery of all the visitor facing elements of the Thames Chase Forest Centre complex.

Place

You will work with the Thames Chase Community Forest Director, Deputy Director, your fellow colleagues and with the support of the Board of Trustees, to create a sense of place, a destination venue and a resource that families and visitors will consider as a day’s offer.

You will sensitively maximise the built heritage within the complex, acknowledging that this adds to the sense of place, our culture, heritage, and tradition. In particular, the agricultural heritage of this landscape.

Business

You will support the Thames Chase Community Forest Deputy Director in leading staff and volunteers in developing and growing the income from all aspects of the Forest Centre, to support the work and aims of the Community Forest and provide a quality visitor experience.

To create a robust business plan for the Forest Centre complex that identifies income potential and scope for maximising the diverse facilities on site whilst protecting the built, cultural and natural heritage

The approach you will need and the skills and attributes we require

To be an exceptional communicator, team-player, and an inspiring manager of an enthusiastic and knowledgeable team. Teamwork will be essential for your role.

To quickly gain an understanding of the Thames Chase Plan and the overall functions, aims and objectives of Thames Chase Community Forest.

To quickly gain an understanding of the Forest Centre budget and financial procedures.

To be familiar with the use of social media, be an effective communicator and able to engage and enthuse others.

To be IT proficient in Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Google Docs.

To have a Full UK driving licence.

To be flexible. The operation of the Forest Centre complex is 7 days. The role requires some evening, weekend and bank holiday working

Development Manager

Are you a passionate and skilled land and property professional with a heart for serving older Christians? We are seeking a Development Manager to play a key role in expanding and strengthening our mission to provide compassionate, faith-based care. This is a unique opportunity to make a tangible difference in the lives of our residents while working alongside a dedicated and motivated team.

We are looking for a Development Manager who will be instrumental in driving our vision forward, identifying new land and acquisition opportunities, and ensuring the highest standards of development and innovation.

As a Development Manager, you will be responsible for leading on strategic development projects, forging key partnerships, and ensuring our growth and renewal programme moves forward in alignment with our mission.

If you are a dynamic and experienced land and property professional with a strong background in acquisitions, planning, project management, and a heart for Christian service, we invite you to apply now.

Responsibilities:

• Lead and manage strategic development projects from inception to completion.
• Identify and develop new opportunities for growth and expansion.
• Work collaboratively with key stakeholders .
• Manage budgets effectively and ensure financial sustainability of development initiatives.
• Prepare reports and provide updates to senior management and trustees.

Skills/Experience:

• Strong leadership and strategic thinking skills.
• Proven experience in land acquisition, development project management, or a similar role.
• Ability to communicate effectively with a wide range of stakeholders.
• Strong financial acumen and experience in managing development budgets.
• A proactive and innovative approach .
• IT proficient, including Microsoft Office Suite.
• Ability to work under pressure and manage multiple priorities.

Applicants must be evangelical Christians (This role has an Occupational Requirement to be filled by a Christian under the provisions of the Equality Act (2010).)

Hours:

Full-time, 40 hours per week.

Benefits:

• Salary: £54,000 per annum
• Remote working
• 5 Weeks' paid holiday per year as well as bank and public holidays
• On-going training and support
• Team events
• Pension scheme
• Care Friends referral 
• Medicash
• Perkbox – including an Employee assistance programme.
• Long-standing service rewards
• Birthday rewards

— What our staff say about us: “It is a friendly and welcoming place to work.” —

We are committed to having a diverse leadership team and encourage applications from disabled and Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic candidates, as these groups are currently underrepresented at the senior management level.

Closing date: 23rd May 2025 – However, this vacancy may close sooner if sufficient applications are received, so please apply as soon as possible if interested.

The Youth Endowment Fund  

People & Operations Officer 
Reports to: Assistant Director of People and Race Equity 

Salary: £33,800 

Contract: 2-year fixed term 

Location: Office based – Central London

Application Deadline: 12pm on Thursday 24th April 2025

Interviews: commencing the week of 5th May 2025 

About the Youth Endowment Fund 

We’re here to prevent children from becoming involved in violence. We do this by finding out what works and building a movement to change things.  

In recent years, violent crime involving children has increased. This is a tragedy. Every child is an important member of our community and society has a duty to protect them.

The Youth Endowment Fund (YEF) is a charity with a £200m endowment that exists to reverse this trend. We will achieve this by finding out what works to prevent youth violence and building a movement to put this knowledge into practice. We do this by funding, evaluating and then spreading the very best work on reducing youth violence across England and Wales. 

Key Responsibilities 

Your focus will be to ensure that the office environment at YEF is a welcoming and inclusive one, being the first point of contact for new starters, employees and external stakeholders. You will be dedicated, in ensuring that the office environment is set up for employees to have a positive, collaborative and engaging experience while working from the office. With key responsibilities for general HR administration, office management and supporting with the coordination of our team culture work, you will naturally enjoy having variety within your day-to-day work and proactively seek solutions to aid better efficient and effective management of our daily HR and operations.

Office Management 

Ensure the physical and virtual spaces in which we work at YEF are excellently managed and a welcoming place to work. This would include: 

• Being a strong and personable office lead. Be welcoming to colleagues new and old and make an ongoing effort to integrate them into the team. 

• Ensuring that the office space is well managed including well stocked office supplies and refreshments. 

• Leading monthly social team activities that foster a sense of belonging. 

• Ensuring we have the systems to make collaboration really easy, liaising directly with our IT supplier and pointing out areas of improvement or discussing how things can be done better. 

HR administration 

Help ensure that projects related to HR or supporting people are done brilliantly. This may require you getting stuck in with some administrative tasks or keeping track of who needs to do what by when. 

• Helping to organise the annual appraisal of staff (setting up and collecting in forms and making sure everyone knows what’s going on) so that everyone learns and develops. 

• Making sure the online system we use for employee records is up to date, well organised and that someone technical fixes things if needed.

• Ensuring that the policies we have (on things like pay, holidays, being in the office etc). are easy for staff to find and that someone is prompted to remind staff about them regularly. 

• Coming to know our staff policies inside out, so that staff can go to you to get a question answered. 

Help us recruit brilliant people by:

• Supporting the administration of the end-to-end recruitment process, such advertising jobs online, arranging interviews, managing candidate correspondences and the keeping up to date records. 

• Assisting in the first phase of CV reviews (spotting great people). 

• Organising and managing all new starter documentation, such as; right to work, references, issuing of an employee contract and DBS’s (where appropriate) 

• Ensuring new staff have the right equipment and IT on day one. Being the go-to person for their administrative questions. 

• Onboarding new team members on our office space and IT systems 

General administration 

Make sure some of most important meetings are incredibly effective. You’ll do this by 

• Organising those meetings (booking rooms, inviting people), taking great minutes, making sure we keep track of things we said we would do and saving the documents in the right place.

• Working really well with colleagues to organise documents and information for reports. 

• Supporting people, you work most closely with (the wider operations team) on some of the more important processes, including audits and document maintenance. 

Team Culture 

You will be passionate about supporting to maintain a strong values-led team culture and able to demonstrate what that means.

• Supporting our Culture Lead to prepare and deliver excellently planned and engaging quarterly team away days. This includes visiting event spaces, managing catering and providing excellent support on the day – including activities. 

• Organising onboarding schedules and ensuring smooth delivery of sessions. 

• Noticing when colleagues are less well connected to the team and working with the Culture Lead to support their integration. 

About You 

You’re this sort of person: 

• You win people over and make everyone feel comfortable. People tend to warm to you and respect you. You build good relationships with people no matter what level they work at. People naturally come to you when they have an issue or are looking for sound advice. 

• You’re passionate about team culture. You’re deeply interested in the culture and values of an organisation. You understand that all roles play an important part in creating and developing a great team culture. 

• You’re extremely trustworthy and exercise good judgement: You’ve experience dealing with sensitive and confidential information and always maintain the confidence of those around you. At the same time, you know when to pull others in for support and who those individuals should be. 

• You like getting things done: You have a track record of making things happen and are incredibly organised. In previous jobs, you’ve held responsibility for ensuring your work is delivered on time. You’re very reliable. 

• You love supporting great teams: You don’t know all the answers, but you enjoy helping colleagues find answers and solve problems so that the team can work brilliantly and efficiently. 

• You’re able to prioritise and multitask many diverse tasks at once: You enjoy moving between different types of projects, whether that be supporting our HR team or sorting out an issue with our IT provider. You prefer a job that looks different every day. You are able to remain calm under pressure and are able to effectively identify what’s most important and how to balance different priorities. 

• You learn fast but remain humble. You’re quick at getting your head around things. It wouldn't faze you to have responsibility for organising things that are new to you as long as you have an expert to ask advice from. You like learning and developing. You know how much you don't know as well as what you do. 

• You don't want your days to pass without making a difference. You want to play a significant part in a charity that’s making a difference. You like the idea of doing a job that makes young people safer. 

• You’re committed to equity, diversity and inclusion. You believe and act in a way that celebrates and encourages a range of experiences, views and values. 

As a member of our People Team, you will embody and be able to demonstrate YEF’s core values. 

• Empathetic 

• Responsible 

• Collaborative 

• Questioning 

• Transparent 

• Brave 

 While it’s not a criteria, we’re especially interested to hear from applicants who have lived experience of youth violence. 

It’s also important to us that the people we hire do not discriminate. We believe in being inclusive and giving everyone an equal chance to succeed. Applications are welcome from all regardless of age, sex, gender identity, disability, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, religion or belief, race, sexual orientation, transgender status or social economic background.

All appointments will be made on merit, following a fair and transparent process. In line with the Equality Act 2010, however, the organisation may employ positive action where candidates from underrepresented groups can demonstrate their ability to perform the role equally well. 

Office Working​ 

The office is based in Central London. This role will be based full-time from the office. Applicants must be comfortable being office based for this role.

To Apply  

To apply, please send a CV and cover letter, and complete the monitoring form click on "Apply for this" button. Please submit your application by 12pm on Thursday 24th April.   

Application Questions

Your cover letter must answer the following two question, within a maximum of 1000 words: 

1. Tell us about a time when you supported an important HR project or process (e.g., appraisals or onboarding). What challenges did you face, and how did you overcome them? 

2. Referring to the 'About You' section on the JD, give clear examples of:

• How your work shows that “You love supporting great teams:” and 

• How “you’re able to prioritise and multitask many diverse tasks at once. 

Interview process  

This will be a two-stage interview process. Interviews will take place the week commencing 5th May 2025, the second stage interview will be an informal interview with the wider People and Operations team.

We do not sponsor work permits and you will be required to provide proof of your eligibility to work in the UK. 

Additional benefits include 

• £1,000 professional development budget annually 

• 28 days holiday plus Bank Holidays 

• Four half days for volunteering activities 

• Employee Assistance Programme – 24hr phone line for free confidential support 

• Volunteering days - 4 half days per year 

• Death in service - 4 times annual salary 

• Flexible hours. Core office hours 10am – 4pm 

• Financial support including travel and hardship loans 

• Employer contributed pension of 5% 

Your Data 

Your personal data will be shared for the purposes of the recruitment exercise. This includes our HR team, interviewers (who may include other partners in the project and independent advisors), relevant team managers and our IT service provider if access to the data is necessary for performance of their roles. We do not share your data with other third parties, unless your application for employment is successful and we make you an offer of employment. We will then share your data with former employers to obtain references for you.

We do not transfer your data outside the European Economic Area. 
The people we are looking for do not discriminate and we believe in being inclusive and giving everyone an equal chance to succeed. Applications are welcome from all regardless of age, sex, gender identity, disability, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, religion or belief, race, sexual orientation, transgender status or social economic background.