Planning Policy For Place Lead

Job Description

Organisation
:
London Borough of Waltham Forest

Salary
: £57,402 - £62,766 (PO7 - PO8)

Contract Type
:
Full-time Permanent

Working hours per week
: 36

Final date to receive applications
: 11/09/2026

Proposed Interview Date(s): W/C 21st September 2026

Reference
: 2258

Bursting with culture, energy, and opportunity, the London Borough of Waltham Forest is a fantastic and exciting place to work.

We are a highly ambitious borough. Driven by culture and the innate creativity of our residents, we have developed new and innovative ways to build our communities. Our Council is relentlessly resident-focused, insight-led, digitally driven and commercially minded; a Council focused on meeting the needs of our existing and future residents.

London Borough of Waltham Forest is one of the Mayor of London's Good Work Standard employers. This accreditation is a proof of our commitment to creating a healthy, fair and inclusive workplace. This includes fair pay and conditions, workplace well-being, skills and progression and diversity and recruitment.

We are looking for an experienced, ambitious and creative planning professional who is passionate about shaping places and delivering positive change through planning policy.

The successful candidate will lead the Council's Policy for Place function, taking a strategic role in the preparation, implementation, monitoring and review of the borough's Local Plan and wider planning policy framework. Working across a broad portfolio, you will help shape supplementary planning guidance, design codes, masterplans, planning briefs and neighbourhood planning initiatives, ensuring that planning policy supports the delivery of high-quality homes, jobs, public spaces and infrastructure across the borough.

The focus of the team over the coming years will be on implementing our ambitious adopted Local Plan, preparing for future reviews and responding to a rapidly evolving national and regional planning agenda. This role will lead on commissioning and managing evidence studies, undertaking public consultation and engagement, monitoring policy performance and providing expert planning policy advice to senior officers, elected members, developers, community organisations and residents.

The right candidate will be passionate about planning and placemaking, with a strong understanding of planning policy and the plan-making process. They will be comfortable working collaboratively across disciplines, communicating complex ideas clearly and building positive relationships with colleagues, communities and partners. Experience of working within a political environment, managing complex projects and helping to shape policy solutions to contemporary challenges such as climate change, biodiversity recovery and sustainable growth will be highly advantageous.

In this role you will work across the wider Place and Design Team alongside planning policy, design, conservation and biodiversity specialists, supporting our matrix working approach and helping to build skills and resilience across the service. The role reports to the Head of Strategic Planning and Design and will have responsibility for supervising specialist officers and managing consultancy commissions where required.

We work to ensure that growth is inclusive, creating a fairer borough and to deliver the new homes and jobs that the borough needs. We are committed to engaging the borough's diverse communities at all stages of the development cycle to ensure that future development brings the benefits they need. The team work to ensure that all new development is of exemplar quality and is supported by the right infrastructure, build in the right places.

We work closely with stakeholders - whether strategic authorities, investors or developers - to make sure that development contributes wider ambitions, enhancing biodiversity, mitigating flood risk, and tackling the Climate Emergency head on.

We work within an inclusive structure that rejects silos, embraces sharing and learning and works flexibly and collaboratively. We have adopted a matrix working approach that assembles the right teams…