Principal Officer Strategic Solutions (for Development and Nature) - ( Ref : 6411 )

Job summary

This position is based Nationally

Job description

Natural England are yet to finalise the details of the 2025 Pay Review. This will be backdated to July 2025, and this could involve a review of our current terms and conditions alongside increases to the advertised pay ranges. If there are any changes to what has been advertised the vacancy manager will be able to provide further details ahead of any offers being accepted.

Join us in shaping a future where nature and people thrive. Whether you're drawn to hands-on conservation or playing a vital part behind the scenes, your work at Natural England will support lasting benefits for the environment and society.

Our Role

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.

Strategic Outcomes for Nature

Our strategy is framed through four strategic outcomes. Each of these outcomes reinforces and amplifies the others, and together they address environmental, social and economic actions critical to thriving nature.

• Recovering Nature – Increased scale and quality of places where nature thrives.
• Building Better Places – Greener homes and infrastructure create healthier, more investable places, recognising we live better where nature thrives around us.
• Improving Health and Wellbeing – Build nature into everyday life so people can support, access and benefit from nature, wherever they live.
• Delivering Security through Nature – Nature helps us adapt to the threats of a changing climate and improves our national security, supporting more resilient food production, healthy soils, clean and plentiful water and clean air.

Find out more about the work of Natural England at

Natural England’s Strategy: Recovering Nature for Growth, Health and Security - GOV.UK.

Job description

The Role

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

Key Tasks/Principal Accountabilities

• 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.

Knowledge, Skills & Experience

• 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.

Benefits

At Natural England, we support a healthy work-life balance by offering full-time, part-time, and flexible working arrangements.

We provide excellent opportunities for career progression, training, and development tailored to your role. This includes ten days annually for personal learning and development, plus three additional days for volunteering.

You’ll receive a generous leave allowance of 33 days per year (pro rata), access to the Civil Service Pension scheme with a 28.97% employer contribution, and a range of benefits such as shopping discounts and a cycle-to-work scheme. Staff can also join the Civil Service Sport club for discounts on sports, leisure activities, and social events.

We are committed to fairness, equality, and inclusivity. Our employee-led diversity networks help foster a welcoming environment where everyone feels valued and supported

Locations

Natural England has adopted hybrid working – which means our staff work from a flexible range of locations, encompassing home, offices (ours and our partners) and relevant sites. All new staff will be formally linked to one of our 25 offices across England, and the expectation is that all new staff will be able to access their local office to be part of the community of staff in their geographical area. Staff are expected to attend their associated office for 20% of their contractual hours.

Staff members are required to carry out all their duties working in this way and cannot do so from an overseas location at any time. Travel expenses will be paid if work-related travel is required but does not apply to travel between home and your associated office.

National team roles can be linked with any Natural England office while Area Team roles will be linked with an office in the relevant geographic area.

View a map of our office locations here: online map of Natural England office locations.

Pay

It is Natural England policy to employ at the entry point of the salary range.

How to Apply

We welcome and encourage applications from all communities. Natural England is accredited to the Disability Confident Scheme, which denotes organisations which have a positive attitude towards disabled people. Disabled applicants who meet the minimum requirements for the role at the shortlisting stage are guaranteed an invitation to interview.

If you require a reasonable adjustment at interview, or there is anything else you would like the panel to take into consideration, you should notify us of this at application stage where possible, or well in advance of your interview. We now provide primary interview questions in advance for all formal recruitments.

This vacancy uses competency-based assessment. We'll assess you against the competencies below during the selection process:

• Technical Skills and Knowledge
• Work Delivery
• Putting People at the Heart of the Environment
• Personal Effectiveness

When completing the application form you should present relevant examples using the STAR format. Give us an example of how you have demonstrated the competency (which can be work related or from another area of your life) and tell us about the Situation, the specific Task you had to undertake, the specific Actions you took, and the Result (both immediate and in a wider context) of your Action.

Please note that STAR format is not required when answering a Technical Skills & Knowledge competency.

Examples should be given in no more than 250 words for each competency.

If you are successful at the shortlisting stage, you will be invited to attend an interview via MS Teams or a suitable alternative, where you will be asked to give examples for all competencies as set out in the Job Description.

Please note: 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 for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Competencies

Competence 1

Professional competency

Detail

Technical Skills and Knowledge

Description

• 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 casework problems (Essential).
  • Experience of managing complex projects through to successful completion (Desirable).
  • A good understanding of ecological systems and the most important development impacts for key habitats or species (Essential).

Competence 2

Professional competency

Detail

Work Delivery

Description

• Manage and deliver your work to meet agreed standards, targets and deadlines (Expert).
  • See the big picture so you can set your team’s work within the context of the organisation’s vision, mission and aims, and help them understand how their work relates to and supports this (Expert).

Competence 3

Professional competency

Detail

Putting People at the Heart of the Environment

Description

• Nurture trusting partnerships and collaborate to achieve pragmatic outcomes that help deliver Natural England’s vision, mission and aims (Expert).
  • Work proactively and collaboratively with stakeholders and partners to identify and secure opportunities to deliver gains for people and nature (Expert).

Competence 4

Professional competency

Detail

Personal Effectiveness

Description

• Be ambitious, identify and adopt ways to make improvements in your team and Natural England and inspire others to act (Expert)
  • Use clear and appropriate language, communication styles and techniques that engage your audience (Expert).
  • Share expertise and knowledge with people and networks so that you can develop together (Expert).

Person specification

Please refer to Job Description

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £51,000, Natural England contributes £14,774 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

Please refer to Job Description

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.

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

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 : Purgle Linham
• Email : purgle.linham@naturalengland.org.uk
• Telephone : 07469 913206

Recruitment team

• Email : defra-recruitment-enquiries@resourcing.soprasteria.co.uk

Further information

https://networkrecruitment.tal.net/vx/appcentre-7/brand-4/spa-1/candidate/so/pm/1/pl/8/opp/6411-6411-Principal-Officer-Strategic-Solutions-for-Development-and-Nature/en-GB

Attachments

DEF-001h - Candidate Pack Natural England v2.3 Opens in new window (docx, 1325kB)