Senior Land Consultant

Senior Land Consultant

The Senior Land Consultant will be responsible for securing land, land access, arranging surveys, and building strong relationships with stakeholders and landowners via statutory powers and/or negotiation. The role focuses on land referencing and land access projects, leading audits and quality assurance reviews, integrating land requirements with engineering, planning and environmental strategies, providing senior-level advice to clients and project boards, overseeing compliance with statutory processes, resolving disputes, contributing to commercial strategy and risk management, establishing training programs and succession planning, managing people and team leadership, arranging and coordinating land surveys, and ensuring compliance with data security and privacy, among other duties.

• The position focuses on securing land, land access, arranging surveys and building strong relationships with stakeholders and landowners via statutory powers and/or negotiation
• Ideally have experience of managing land referencing and land access projects
• Lead audits and quality assurance reviews of land referencing documentation and processes
• Drive integration of land requirements with engineering, planning, and environmental strategies
• Provide senior-level advice to clients and project boards on land acquisition risks and opportunities
• Oversee compliance with statutory processes and ensure projects meet regulatory and legal obligations, including those relating to data security and privacy
• Resolve disputes and resolve sensitive issues with diplomacy and authority
• Contribute to commercial strategy and risk management for land-related contracts
• Establish training programmes and succession planning within the Land team
• People management and team leadership
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills to engage with landowners, communities, and stakeholders
• Ability to arrange and coordinate land surveys, ensuring compliance with legal and environmental standards
• Experience working on infrastructure, utilities, or energy projects (preferred)
• Consulting with landowners to explain proposed scheme, programme, discuss potential impacts and ensure accurate consultation notes are taken and uploaded to our consultation database
• Skilled in stakeholder engagement, building trust and maintaining positive relationships
• Ensuring that WSP H&S procedures are adhered to for all site work
• Knowledge of land access permissions, land access, s172s licences and site safety experience (preferred)
• Management of junior members of Land team providing support and technical training by contributing to and participating in our CPD-accredited Land Academy
• Using statutory powers and other available mechanisms to acquire land
• Preparation and quality assurance of technical documents in relation to the identification of land interests and rights, negotiation of access to land for surveys, consents and acquisition of land rights
• Negotiation of Heads of Terms to secure land for projects
• Liaising with landowners, land agents, auctioneers, legal representatives, planning authorities, key stakeholders, contractors and clients
• Work closely with Land team colleagues and collaborate with internal and external engineering, environmental, and planning teams
• Experience in working with multi-disciplinary teams across a range of sectors and locations across UK and/or Ireland
• Develop efficient working practices and promote innovation in the team to provide industry-leading, best-value services to our clients
• Management and development of a team of early career professionals providing both technical training and career development support
• Contribute to business development and the delivery of the business strategy
• UK and Ireland travel plus the possibility of travel to WSP's Global Capability Centre (GCC) in India

• Degree or equivalent experience in Geography, Land/Estate Management, Agriculture or a relevant discipline
• Worked to deliver land referencing, land access, landowner engagement services and statutory processes on major infrastructure projects
• Experience of negotiating with landowners and knowledge of the legal process for…