About us at Hounslow

We’d love you to join us at the London Borough of Hounslow! Our people are deeply committed to providing excellent services to our residents, doing all we can to make lives as good as they can be.

We are an outstanding council, serving an outstanding borough. With brilliant, visionary leadership, a dynamic Cabinet and a can-do culture, we’ve built strong partnerships which have transformed how we serve one of London’s most diverse boroughs. Hounslow is the world in one place and full of potential. We are stepping up for our residents like never before.

About our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

We live by five core values: Lead with Heart, Do New, Pass on the Power, Harness the Mix and Be a Rock. All our work has equality, diversity and inclusion at its very heart, best articulated in “Harness the Mix”. It's about breaking down barriers between our parts and people and unlocking the problem-solving power of our amazing mix of minds. We serve a diverse community, we have a diverse workforce and we are committed to being an inclusive employer.

We work hard to create representation across our workforce and leadership community, we have thriving employee network groups and our learning and development programmes help us lead, model and breathe ways of working that eliminate inequality, inequity, injustice and bias.

As part of this and under our commitments as a Disability Confident Employer, we make reasonable adjustments to accommodate our candidates. There’s space for you to tell us what you need within our application form.

Our Benefits

If you join us, you’ll have access to a range of employee benefits. Read more about these here.

About The Role

Feltham Prison is a category C facility; housing adult male prisoners from the age of 18, located within the London Borough of Hounslow. We are recruiting a Senior Library Assistant to support and grow the delivery of the prison library service within the unique environment of Feltham Prison.

This role involves working closely with the Library Manager to deliver a high-quality library service to all prisoners. You will oversee the daily operational management of the library, including staff rota’s and planned visits to the library. Working with various partner organisations within the prison, this role will be vital in ensuring all men have equal access to the library and that the library provides resources and materials that are relevant and of interest to their requirements. You will be working directly with prisoners to understand their unique library needs and promote a positive reading culture within the prison. Recommending appropriate books and resources that will be of interest to individual needs will be a vital part of this role to ensure the library is providing suitable materials and use of the library increases.

You will be responsible for planning and delivering outreach activities and events to suit the interests of the library users and promote the library at all times. This will involve working closely with library users and partner organisations to discuss events that are of interest to prisoners, those that enhance library use and clubs and activities that enhance personal and educational improvements for prisoners.

This role will often require being on your feet for long periods of time, visiting units to speak to prisoners on a regular basis. You will be expected to adhere to all prison security guidance and attend training as required provided by the prison and the council to ensure your own personal safety.

About The Team You’ll Be Working In

The Prison Library team at HMP Feltham is dedicated to providing access to the library for all prisoners, through unit and class visits to the library and a comprehensive mobile library service. The library team works closely with partners such as the education provider and the Reducing Reoffending team, to ensure an integrated library service is delivered.

As part of the small library team, you will be working closely with the Library Manager to ensure the library provides essential reading and research materials and engaging outreach to the library users.

Through the unit and class visits, the library aims to promote reading for pleasure and learning, help develop essential literacy skills and enable rehabilitation. During these visits, the team positively engage with prisoners, promoting stock and resources that are of interest to individual needs and ensure the library is well used.

Tailored weekly outreach activities and library clubs are enhancing the library service delivery and increasing library use. Working with the library team, the education providers and the Senior Leadership team within the prison, these outreach activities are due to grow in the coming year, and the Senior Library Assistant will be a vital part of that growth. You will be involved in all aspects of these outreach activities from the initial planning stages to delivery and evaluation of each activity. Future plans for these outreach activities include introducing a book club, author visits and library clubs that positively promote the library and increase library users.

As part of this role, you will take responsibility for deputising for the library manager as needed. This will involve compiling statistics and reports for the prison’s internal management team, in line with the prison contract. You will also be required to attend meeting with the prison and council Senior Leaderships Teams, providing reports on library delivery and improvement.

This is an exceptionally rewarding role which can at times be challenging due to the nature of the work environment.

About You

You will have the ability to work calmly under pressure, with patience and understanding, and are able to diffuse difficult situations.

You will have a customer focused approach to ensure a high-quality library service is delivered whilst working within a volatile environment, understanding the unique needs of library users in a prison and their specific needs.

You will be confident to work flexibly with the team to ensure library opening hours and access is available to all prisoners, whilst adhering to prison regime.

Able to work as part of a team and independently, prioritising own work and that of the wider team.

You will have proven experience of supervising and mentoring staff and volunteers.

If the points below resonate with you, we’d love you to put in an application:

1. You have the confidence to face and deal with challenging behaviour head on.

2. You can work independently and as part of a small team.

3. You are willing to work flexibly and adapt at short notice.

4. You care about providing access to libraries for all and prisoner rehabilitation.

Essential for the Role

Enhanced DBS check is required for the role.

Read more about the work you’ll be doing in the Role Profile.

Don’t meet every single requirement? We know that sometimes people can be put off applying for a job if they think they can’t tick every box. At Hounslow, we realise the ‘perfect candidate’ doesn’t exist. So, if you can do most of what we’re looking for, go ahead and apply. You may be just the right candidate for the job or be perfect for one of our other roles!

When Interviews Will Be Held And Who To Contact

The key information you need about the role should be in the Role Profile , but if you have any further questions about the role, please contact:

Email: Charlotte.Arthur@hounslow.gov.uk

Telephone: 07970 955 150

Interviews for this job will be held on Wednesday, 11th March 2026 and will include a short presentation. The subject of the presentation will be given to successful candidates when called for interview.