Historic Environment Adviser

Job summary

What you’ll do…

As the largest land manager in the country, Forestry England oversees a vast and diverse network of more than 1,500 forests and woods, spanning over 250,000 hectares. We often celebrate our landscapes for their natural beauty and ecological significance, yet they also harbour some of England’s most extraordinary historical sites, monuments, and stories. Beneath the leafy canopies and towering trees lies a rich tapestry of human history, preserved and intertwined with the very roots of the land.

The Historic Environment Adviser will lead our work in championing the historic environment, working with our frontline forestry teams across the west and south west of England, to identify, protect and celebrate historic environment features.

The Historic Environment Adviser will inspire others to support our work in growing the future, championing our Forestry England values. Together we are Forestry England, we grow forests for all, for life.

Please see the job description below for more information and details about what we need from you.

Where you’ll work…

The postholder will be based at the district office at Bank House, Coleford, Gloucestershire (other Forestry England office locations within the district may be considered).

Job description

Key responsibilities & accountabilities

Advocate for the historic environment

• Foster a positive team working relationship between the operational delivery teams, the forest planners and the area ecologists so as to inspire and engage everyone on the historic environment, sharing knowledge, harnessing expertise and building insight and trust. Be open and realistic as to the challenges inherent in the business, promoting transparency and constructive dialogue to achieve positive outcomes.
• Collaborate and build relationships with stakeholders including statutory bodies, NGOs, academic institutions and community groups to support and celebrate the historic environment as an integral part of sustainable forest management. Co ordinating with other team members to ensure consistent messaging and avoiding of duplication of effort.

Forest Planning

• Lead the renewal of Scheduled Ancient Monument plans as part of Forest Plan renewals. Share understanding of the plan and secure the buy-in of the beat forester and their team so that the value and importance of the specific site (or collection of sites) is better understood and thus valued and promoted.
• Support the forest planning team with forest plans renewals incorporating non scheduled heritage features and sharing knowledge and insights with the beat teams who will look after those features.
• Champion the historic environment likely to be associated with ancient woodlands and veteran treescapes to inspire best practice approaches to ancient woodland restoration and veteran trees management. Support training of field staff so they can identify and record potential historic environment features as part of their normal work.
• Commission specific historic environment surveys and research to answer questions pertinent to understanding sites so as to optimise their protection and management in the context of sustainable forest management.
• Update and maintain the historic environment layer in our GIS systems.

Community engagement and communications

• Liaise closely with the communications and marketing team to champion and promote the work undertaken and direction of travel. Identify and support opportunities to engage with the Festival of Archaeology.
• Where appropriate engage communities and volunteers in the survey, monitoring and evaluation of historic environment sites within our woodlands.
• In the Forest of Dean, support the Area Manager with the implementation of the ‘Our Shared Forest – Built Heritage’ plan.

Project Management & Monitoring

• Positively collaborate with finance and business support to maintain clarity on approved expenditure plans and monitoring of spend against delivery.
• Undertake realistic project planning and adherence to existing Forestry England systems and processes to manage project delivery on time and to budget.
• Feed into monitoring and reporting on progress of the Nature Recovery Programme in a timely, transparent and accurate manner.
• Feed into national reporting on historic environment measures and progress.

Historic Environment Projects

• Identify, develop and implement historic environment projects consistent with the emerging strategy, ensuring readiness for funding opportunities and supporting both existing and new initiatives.
• Deliver strategic historic environment monitoring and analysis, contributing to evidence-based decision making and natural capital approaches.

And any other tasks, reasonably requested by your line manager.

Person specification

Skills, knowledge & experience

Essential professional and technical experience

• Knowledge and experience of working with historic environment features in the landscape • Proven ability to work positively and collaboratively within multidisciplinary teams.
• A strong track record of successfully researching and writing conservation management plans for scheduled and unscheduled sites with varied community and other stakeholder engagement.
• Experience of commissioning archaeological survey work, including remote sensing techniques, watching briefs and geophysical surveys.
• Strong networking, communication and influencing skills.
• Ability and competence in use of IT packages including MS Office and GIS mapping software.

Qualifications

Essential

• A degree or equivalent in one of: archaeology, historic environment management / conservation, cultural heritage.
• The successful applicant will be a member or able to become a member of the Chartered Institute of Archaeologists, at Associate level or above.

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Seeing the Big Picture
• Working Together
• Communicating and Influencing

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £33,854, Forestry Commission contributes £9,807 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

• Learning and development tailored to your role
• An environment with flexible working options
• A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
• A Civil Service pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours, Strengths and Experience.

How to apply…

You will be asked to write a 200 word statement on your relevant experience and career history, along with a personal statement of no more than 500 words. You will be assessed on both during sifting. More details about how to apply are listed on the application form.

You will be assessed on behaviour and strength based questions during your interview.

The Behaviours being assessed at interview are –

• Seeing the Big Picture
• Working Together
• Communicating and Influencing

If candidates pass the interview but are not the leading candidate they can be placed on a reserve list. We may offer candidates on the reserve list for this role the opportunity to be considered for other roles at the same or lower pay bands.

Successful candidates will undergo a criminal record check and the government baseline personnel security standard check.

If you require any reasonable adjustments, please email fcrecruitmentteam@forestryengland.uk.

If you're planning to use AI to support your application, please ensure you've read our guidelines here first.

Read more about our application process and working with us on the Forestry England website.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window).The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.

Diversity and Inclusion

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see theCivil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).

Apply and further information

This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) initiative.The Civil Service welcomes applications from people who have recently left prison or have an unspent conviction. Read more about prison leaver recruitment (opens in new window).Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.

Contact point for applicants

Job contact :

• Name : FC Recruitment Team
• Email : fcrecruitmentteam@forestryengland.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : fcrecruitmentteam@forestryengland.uk

Further information

Our recruitment process is underpinned by the principle of appointment on the basis of fair and open competition and appointment on merit, as outlined in the Civil Service Commissioners’ Recruitment Principles.If you feel your application has not been treated in accordance with these principles and you wish to make a complaint, you should in the first instance contact FCE by email: englandhr.services@forestryengland.uk. If you are not satisfied with the response you receive, you can contact the Civil Service Commission, which regulates all Civil Service recruitment.

Attachments

Forestry England Job Description - Historic Environment Adviser (PB5) Opens in new window (pdf, 178kB)