Principal Officer - Development Plan Delivery

Natural England is the Government’s adviser for the natural environment and the Nature regulator with a wide range of statutory duties and powers. We provide the evidence, expertise and advice to recover Nature and shape better places for people to live. We do this working through and with others.

This is an exciting opportunity to join a busy team at the forefront of delivery, as Natural England seeks to deliver major government planning reforms, supporting our ambition for a healthy natural environment that underpins sustainable growth, supporting greener homes and infrastructure that create healthier nature-rich places for people to live, learn, work and play.

The Major Planning Casework Team sits within National Delivery and provides national leadership, coordination and support for Natural England’s engagement with major planning casework, including development plans, nationally significant projects and other complex, high‑risk casework. The team works across the organisation and external partners to ensure planning systems support nature recovery and achieve Natural England’s ambition for thriving nature for people and planet.

Development plans (Local Plans and Spatial Development Strategies) represent some of Natural England’s most strategically important planning work, shaping the future of places before development proposals come forward. National Delivery plays a critical role in overseeing a pipeline of development plan work delivered by area teams, ensuring we provide high‑quality, timely, advice, prioritising our resource and enabling growth and nature recovery through strategic advice.

• Champion development plan work as a key mechanism for nature recovery, promoting the value of proactive plan‑shaping internally and externally.
• Lead national oversight of a pipeline of Local Plans and Spatial Development Strategies (SDS), ensuring Natural England has a clear, coherent understanding of scale, timing, risks and opportunities across England.
• Ensure prioritisation and resourcing of development plan casework across Natural England, making sure that specialist time is deployed where it adds most value.
• Provide leadership and assurance on development plan delivery, ensuring consistent approaches, high‑quality advice, and effective risk management across the delivery.
• Act as the national coordination point, working with Area Team leads, specialists, Operations Managers, and Strategy colleagues to ensure that the organisation is aligned and that development plan commitments are delivered.
• Support and guide Area Teams, providing escalation routes, setting expectations and enabling teams to deliver high‑impact, evidence‑led advice on plan‑
• Drive improvements to operational systems, including forward planning, tracking tools, prioritisation frameworks, and national standards for development plan casework.
• The role requires strategic operational leadership, excellent judgement, strong stakeholder engagement skills, and deep understanding of the opportunities plan‑making offers for nature at landscape scale.

• Provide strategic oversight of a national development plan pipeline, including complexity, risk, deadlines and resourcing needs, ensuring a clear organisational understanding of priorities.
• Lead the national coordination of operational delivery, ensuring Area Teams and specialists work in a coherent and aligned way to meet statutory deadlines, manage risks and secure the best outcomes for nature.
• Use insight and evidence to anticipate capacity and capability pressures, advising senior leaders on future resource, capability and organisational needs relating to development plan delivery.

• Ensure the effective deployment of finite specialist capacity (ecology, strategic planning specialists, modelling, species experts etc.), making clear decisions on priorities between plan‑making and development management casework.
• Maintain oversight of workloads across Area Teams, actively directing or rebalancing resource where necessary to support timely, high‑quality plan advice.