Principal Officer Strategic Solutions; Development and Nature

Do you want to make a real difference, working in a high priority area, securing significant environmental gains at a national level? These roles are a rare opportunity to play a part in bringing about systematic change to how the planning system works for nature and growth.

We are seeking ambitious individuals with great communication and organisational skills to join our highly performing, supportive and friendly teams across Natural England’s Sustainable Development work. Natural England’s new Strategy includes making a shift from isolated interventions to nature recovery happening at scale, ensuring our efforts deliver lasting improvement across whole landscapes and seascapes.

As part of this, our Sustainable Development work is helping build better places, ensuring nature is designed into development and investment plans from the outset. We do this by advising and influencing Government Departments, regulators, the Office of Environmental Protection, industry, NE colleagues and others on how the land use and marine planning systems can protect and restore nature.

In these roles you will be working on the most important development impacts of our age. These are mostly cumulative, indirect impacts such as air pollution, water pollution, water shortage, habitat fragmentation, disturbance of sensitive species, and obstruction of natural coastal change. These are the impact types which present most risk to development and delivery of economic growth because they are difficult to resolve at site scale.

They require strategic solutions which will address impacts at many sites and deliver gains for nature on a large scale. We are looking for win-wins which will help society to meet its broad objectives, including the boosting of nature’s recovery.

The team is currently engaged in a range of strategic solutions for offshore energy generation, air pollution, recreational disturbance and water resources. The breadth of this work will grow, as we aim to expand radically the range of strategic solutions available to secure positive outcomes from development.

• Shape and deliver legislative planning, policy reforms and infrastructure projects to ensure that they are customer focused, digitally enabled and sustainable in the long term with a shift to nature’s recovery at scale delivered through the planning system.
• Developing innovative Strategic Solutions to high-risk planning casework with widespread or large-scale environmental implications.
• Provide positive leadership of your work area ensuring and articulating a clear vision and work programme.
• Develop and oversee delivery of your work programme, working collaboratively across the organisation providing strong internal leadership and integration across national teams and Operations.
• Provide expert advice to colleagues to help inform and shape new approaches and decision-making within and outside the organisation.
• Ensure a positive and collaborative working relationship with key contacts in Government departments etc.
• Provide expert advice to Government on your area of responsibility to shape key policy development/strategy/legislative initiatives.

• Work with government departments and key stakeholders to influence emerging policy and strategy as it relates to planning strategic solutions, to maximise environmental outcomes.
• Identify opportunities for and lead the design and implementation of new strategic solutions. This will include:
• Support, and enable, the delivery of strategic solutions by:
  Developing and lead relevant projects through appropriate governance processes.

• Experience of managing senior-level relationships with government and external partners, representing your organisation at a national level (Essential).
• Expertise and experience of delivering solutions to address environmental impacts for high-risk planning casework (Essential).
• Expertise and experience of applying the Habitats Regulations in complex planning casework to achieve positive environmental outcomes (Essential).
• Experience of developing creative strategic solutions to complex…