Where we work
We deliberately limited our scope so that the first conversation can start at your actual problem, rather than at an explanation of how your organisation works.
The reasoning
Refusing work is an odd thing for a young firm to do. We do it because the alternative is worse: an HR consultancy that serves everybody arrives at every engagement needing to be taught the client's pay framework, its governance structure and its statutory duties — and the client pays for that education in billable hours.
Education, health and local government share enough DNA to make specialising across all three coherent. Nationally negotiated terms. Statutory consultation duties. Governance layers that must approve workforce decisions. Public accountability. Budgets set by someone other than the organisation spending them. The specifics differ considerably; the shape of the problem does not.
What that means practically: when a headteacher describes a capability case, we already know the Burgundy Book position and where the governing body sits in the process. When an NHS manager describes a banding dispute, we know how Agenda for Change job matching works. That is time you do not pay for.
Our sectors
Maintained schools, multi-academy trusts, sixth form and FE colleges, and specialist provision — where governance, safeguarding and national teaching terms shape every decision.
Education HR
Trusts, primary care, community providers and social care organisations — where professional regulation and 24/7 operating patterns complicate every process.
Health & care HR
Councils, combined authorities, arm's-length bodies, blue light services and housing associations — where political oversight and public scrutiny sit above the HR question.
Local government HR
What they have in common
These are the reasons public sector HR needs public sector HR advisers, and the reasons generic advice tends to fail on contact.
Nationally negotiated pay and conditions frameworks mean many of the levers a private employer would reach for are not available. Advice that starts with ‘vary the contract’ is often advice that cannot be taken.
Statutory and negotiated consultation obligations set a floor on how fast anything can move. Programmes fail when the timetable is built from a target date rather than from the duties.
Governors, trustees, boards and committees have to approve things, and they meet on a cycle. That cycle is a hard constraint on your programme plan and it is routinely forgotten until it bites.
Freedom of information, public board papers and local press interest mean the process itself can end up in the open. Everything we write is written on that assumption.
Whichever it is, the first conversation is free and starts at your problem rather than at an introduction to your organisation.
Prefer email? hello@civitashr.co.uk · Or call 020 0000 0000