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Senior Veterinary Inspector

Employer
Animal and Plant Health Agency
Location
England, Scotland, Wales
Salary
National: £35,895 - £40,613 / London: £38,751 - £43,847
Closing date
25 Jan 2021

Grade: Senior Executive Officer

Working pattern: Flexible working, Full-time, Job share, Part-time

About the job

APHA’s role to safeguard animal and plant health and protect against disease. We employ around 2,300 staff who all play a key part in delivering this as part of the Defra group and for our customers including the Scottish Government and Welsh Government.

We are responsible for identifying, managing and eradicating incidences and outbreaks of endemic and exotic diseases and pests in animals, plants and bees. This requires expertise in the areas of:

  • Inspection
  • testing and diagnosis
  • epidemiology
  • surveillance
  • disease and pest identification, containment and eradication
  • post-outbreak recovery
  • customer support and advice

The APHA strategy is central to Defra’s ambitions to provide a better place for people to live in, to enhance our environment and develop the rural economy.

Job description

The purpose of a Senior Veterinary Inspector is to provide veterinary operational services to safeguard animal health and welfare and public health, protect the economy and enhance food security through inspection, surveillance, regulation, enforcement and where applicable research, through the application of state veterinary medicine in the delivery of GB Governments’ policies.

You will have well-honed interpersonal skills with the ability to provide authoritative advice, sometimes under difficult circumstances to a wide range of stakeholders. You will often be required to work and make decisions alone, and therefore need logical and methodological thought processes. You will need to have the ability to absorb rapidly changing policy decisions, often under pressure and be aware of the implications of decisions that can have far reaching consequences. Your fact-finding ability and analytical skills will assist you in your role and in addition you will need to show initiative, originality and creativity especially when faced with various challenging situations.

Senior Veterinary Inspectors have a range of duties and are asked to work both independently and as part of a team.

At the moment we are particularly looking for talented veterinary professionals to join our team responsible for undertaking checks on live animals entering Great Britain safeguarding animal welfare and facilitating International Trade, primarily at Border Control Posts, but may also include at destination.

From July 2021 APHA will deliver checks on live animals as described in the UK Border Operating Model.

In these roles, most of your time will be spent carrying out veterinary checks on live animals imported into GB from the European Union and depending on your location this may also include imports from Third Countries. Your role will be to prevent the introduction of notifiable diseases and invasive species into the UK, and to ensure the welfare of animals during transport is not compromised. This involves undertaking documentary, identity, physical and welfare checks on a variety of animals which may include commercial cats and dogs, horses, livestock, birds, insects, fish, reptiles, amphibians.

Depending on location you may be required to work in a shift pattern. This pattern can be early morning or a late evening shift and can span over weekends and public holidays.

Closing dates:

England: Monday 25th January 2021.

Wales & Scotland: Monday 1st February 2021.

To apply, please click the apply button.

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