Facilities Manager for the United Reformed Church

About the United Reformed Church

The United Reformed Church (URC) is one of the UK's largest Christian denominations, with approximately 56,000 members across more than 1,500 churches from Orkney to Cornwall.

Its national administrative headquarters is Church House, 86 Tavistock Place, London. The building accommodates around 60 staff and provides meeting and conference space used by church committees, trustees, internal teams and external visitors. Parts of the property are leased to commercial and residential tenants, so one building serves several groups with different requirements.

Our work with the United Reformed Church

After an in-house recruitment campaign did not produce the right appointment, the URC appointed Maxwell Stephens exclusively to recruit a Facilities Manager for its headquarters.

• Facilities Manager, Church House, 86 Tavistock Place, London

Facilities Manager, Church House

The brief

Reporting to the Chief Operating Officer, the Facilities Manager is the organisation's only facilities management professional and leads a small operational team of a Caretaker, Cleaners and a Receptionist. The role carries responsibility for the appearance, maintenance, safety, services and use of Church House, including:

• planned and reactive maintenance, building services and third-party contractors
• health and safety, statutory compliance, safety and security
• relationships with commercial and residential tenants
• meeting rooms, hospitality and support for committee meetings
• facilities budgets, space utilisation and opportunities for additional commercial income
• environmental improvements supporting the URC's net zero by 2030 aspiration
• working with committees, groups and volunteers

The challenge

Mixed-use buildings are demanding out of proportion to their size. A commercial tenant's expectations are contractual, a residential tenant's are statutory and a colleague's are cultural, and one manager has to meet all three from one budget. With no other facilities professional in the organisation, the postholder has to be credible on compliance, contractor performance and budgets while handling the practical running of an occupied building. Many decisions are made by committee, so the post also needs someone who can carry authority without much formal power.

Our approach

We worked with the URC's senior leadership to understand Church House, the organisation's culture and its long-term objectives before approaching the market. The search targeted facilities professionals who had run commercial or charitable buildings in sole charge, with experience across compliance, contractor and supplier management, budgets, tenant relations, meeting-room operations and stakeholder engagement. IWFM, IOSH, NEBOSH or equivalent qualifications were treated as highly desirable, because a sole-charge manager has no in-house specialist to check their judgement on statutory compliance. We assessed just as closely for patience, communication and a collaborative style suited to the URC.

The outcome

Following a full search and assessment process, Maxwell Stephens placed a Facilities Manager at Church House. The appointment gave the URC dedicated oversight of building services, maintenance, security and compliance, closer coordination of tenant requirements, clear management of the Caretaker, Cleaners and Receptionist, support for environmental initiatives, and informed facilities input to committees.

Client testimonial

I would like to say thank you to Maxwell Stephens for their hard work on this recruitment campaign. The whole recruitment process was extremely professional and efficient and we felt you supplied us with a very good field of candidates.

Helen Bird
HR Officer, The United Reformed Church

Why it worked

Briefs like this are often written as technical specifications, because that is the part that is easy to write down. What decided this appointment was the other half: working with committees, tenants and volunteers whose interests in the same building do not always align, while keeping the operational detail moving. Framing the search around sole-charge experience, rather than the size of the buildings a candidate had worked in, kept the shortlist to people who had already carried the whole function on their own.

If you are recruiting a standalone Facilities Manager for a headquarters or mixed-use building, or replacing a campaign that has not produced the right shortlist, talk to Maxwell Stephens about defining the brief and reaching the people who fit it.