Food Waste Chargehand

Location: Stowmarket, Suffolk, IP14 5AT
Salary: £35,923 plus excellent benefits
Schedule: Permanent, Full-time, Monday to Friday, 6.30am to 3pm or 9am to 5.30pm

Ready to impact a better future?

As a Food Waste Chargehand in our Environmental Services team, you’ll supervise frontline operational teams, support the safe delivery of essential services, and help ensure work is completed to the highest standards. Your leadership will play a key role in maintaining service quality, safety, and customer satisfaction across the local community.

Our work touches lives every day. By leading colleagues, supporting operational excellence, and helping create impactful solutions to service challenges, you’ll make a positive impact on communities while helping us impact a better future. This is a role with purpose, responsibility, and opportunities for growth.

What you’ll do as a Food Waste Chargehand

• Supervise and support operational teams, providing on-the-job training, mentoring, and guidance to ensure work is completed safely and effectively.
• Coordinate daily activities, routes, schedules, and workloads, adapting plans as required to respond to operational challenges and changing conditions.
• Promote high standards of health and safety, ensuring compliance with company procedures, Council policies, and safe working practices.
• Act as a key link between colleagues, supervisors, managers, clients, and customers, maintaining clear and effective communication.
• Monitor work quality, attendance, use of personal protective equipment (PPE), and operational performance, reporting issues where appropriate.
• Complete and maintain accurate records, including timesheets, incident reports, vehicle checks, waste documentation, and other operational paperwork.

 
Does this sound like you?

• Full Class 2 Heavy Goods Vehicle (HGV) licence or above.
• Experience supervising or leading operational teams in an environmental, waste, recycling, cleansing, or similar service environment.
• Strong understanding of health and safety requirements and a commitment to safe working practices.
• Excellent communication and customer care skills, with the ability to build trust and positive working relationships.
• Organised, adaptable, and confident making day-to-day decisions to support service delivery.

 
What we offer

• 24 days’ holiday plus bank holidays (and the option to buy up to five additional leave days each year)
• Up to 6% contributory pension scheme
• Over 1,100 internal courses available, funding for qualifications and apprenticeships (we currently offer over 60 different apprenticeships), mentoring opportunities, and a focus on internal progression.
• Employee Assistance Programme, Bupa Anytime HealthLine, wellbeing app, 30% off at Serco-managed leisure centres, and 24/7 access to a virtual GP service
• Discounts across around 1,000 retailers, from food and clothing to days out, entertainment and travel
• Paid volunteering day, tax-free charitable giving through Payroll Giving Scheme, donate your pennies from your monthly pay to the Serco People Fund Charity
• Our employee networks support connection by providing spaces for collaboration, learning, and belonging. They represent and empower all our colleagues including veterans, LGBTQIA+ employees, women, parents and carers, people with disabilities, and people from all cultural backgrounds.

 
Vetting and checks:

As well as checking eligibility to work in the UK, you will also complete an Occupational Health Questionnaire to help us identify and provide any support you may need to undertake the role effectively.

 
Let’s impact a better future, together. Apply today.

A little bit about us:
At Serco, everyone plays a vital part in delivering essential public services that make a real difference. As a global team of 50,000 people across Defence, Transport, Justice, Immigration, Healthcare, Leisure and Citizen Services, we’re united by a shared purpose: to improve the services that communities rely on. Guided by our values of Trust, Care, Innovation and Pride, our people make meaningful impact, every single day.

Our inclusive recruitment commitment:
We prioritise your skills and potential. As a Disability Confident Leader, the Top Great British Employer of Veterans 2026, and a Gold Inclusive Employer Standard holder, we champion equal opportunities for all. We offer flexible and hybrid working where possible and make reasonable adjustments throughout recruitment and employment.

• Guaranteed Interview Scheme: Applicants with disabilities, veterans and people with convictions, who meet the minimum job criteria, are guaranteed an interview. Simply opt into the relevant scheme on the application form.
• Ban The Box: We also support fair access for those with unspent criminal convictions through our ‘Ban the Box’ pledge (some roles may have security exemptions).

For support with your application, please contact recruitmentuk@serco.com.