Senior Economist - ( Ref : 6362 )

Job summary

This position is based Nationally

Job description

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

The Role

We are seeking an experienced Economist to join our team of economists in the Chief Scientist Directorate of Natural England.

The team’s mission is to ensure the true value of the natural environment is fully reflected in decision-making. We achieve this by delivering rigorous economic analysis and applying it to real-world challenges, strengthening the evidence base for environmental economics and improving how it is used in practice.

This role requires you to apply technical expertise, experience, and critical thinking to complex and often novel questions. Working within the Chief Scientist’s Directorate, you will collaborate with colleagues across disciplines—including social science and natural capital specialists—to provide practical, evidence-based advice that directly informs policy and delivery

Economists at Natural England operate in a small, collaborative team engaged in diverse, high-profile projects. These range from supporting Spending Review bids and developing Impact Assessments, to producing Natural Capital Accounts, building economic models to evaluate environmental projects, and creating tools that help organisations integrate environmental considerations into both strategic and site-level decisions.

Our work spans a wide range of areas, including health and wellbeing, nature recovery, economic development, marine policy, and green finance.

A key part of this role will be providing quantitative analysis and assurance for Landscape Recovery project evaluations. Landscape Recovery (LR) is one of the Environmental Land Management Schemes, alongside Sustainable Farming Incentive and Countryside Stewardship. LR is aimed at landowners and managers who want to take an ambitious, transformational and large-scale approach to restoring nature. These projects unite multiple partners, who at the end of a two-year development phase are required to submit a series of delivery plans (deliverables) for assurance.

This assurance process is designed to assess the appropriateness and robustness of these projects ahead of agreeing any potential implementation agreements which would commit to 20-years of public funding. The role will involve validating data, addressing uncertainties, and ensuring recommendations are robust, evidence-driven, and impactful

Job description

Key Tasks/Principal Accountabilities

• Lead economic analysis to support environmental decision-making, including natural capital valuation and development of analytical tools.
• Collaborate across disciplines and with external partners on high-profile projects such as Spending Reviews and Impact Assessments.
• Provide quantitative analysis and assurance for Landscape Recovery project evaluations, working closely with Defra and NE colleagues to validate data, resolve uncertainties, and ensure robust, evidence-based recommendations.
• Lead and support analysis, research and advice that meets the government's technical analytical professional standards including appraisal, business case development, and environmental valuation.

Provide accurate, innovative and up-to-date economic insights to the organisation to support the delivery of the 2025 Strategy.

Knowledge, Skills & Experience

• Expertise in economics or environmental economics (essential).
• Undergraduate or postgraduate degree in economics (or environmental economics) or equivalent experience (essential)
• Strong numerical and analytical skills, with experience applying these in economic contexts (essential)
• Ability to explain complex economic concepts clearly to non-economists. (essential)
• Good verbal and written communication skills and ability to work effectively in a team. (essential)
• Ability to understand the full context of cases/projects and apply interpretive, evaluative, analytical, and problem-solving skills (essential).
• Ensure robustness, quality, and impact of evidence and analysis within your specialism (essential).
• Ability to lead analytical and research projects or provide the analytical leadership in cross-cutting work (essential)
• Demonstrate responsibility for the delivery of analysis, advice, support and research that is both high standard economics and suitable for our customers (essential)
• Experience of being involved in negotiations with partners and stakeholders (desirable)

Competencies

Competence 1

Professional competency

Detail

• Technical Skills & Knowledge

Description

• Current expertise in economics or environmental economics. (Essential)
  • An under-graduate or post-graduate degree in economics (or environmental economics) or equivalent experience. Applicants that do not hold the required degrees should specify experience and outputs that they have produced that demonstrate that they have an equivalent level of knowledge. (Essential)
  • Strong numerical and analytical skills and experience of employing these in the application of economics. (Essential)
  • Good verbal and written communication skills. The successful candidate must be able to work effectively as part of a team and to explain complex economics concepts in a meaningful way to non-economists. (Essential)

Competence 2

Professional competency

Detail

Personal Effectiveness

Description

• Make and explain objective decisions which combine your professional judgement and evidence (Expert)
  • Share expertise and knowledge with people and networks so that you can develop together (Practitioner)

Competence 3

Professional competency

Detail

Work Delivery

Description

• Handle data responsibly, understand your role in good governance, and comply with delegations, policies and procedures (Practitioner)
  • Manage and deliver your work to meet agreed targets and deadlines (Expert)

Competence 4

Professional competency

Detail

Putting People at the Heart of the Environment

Description

• Work proactively and collaboratively with stakeholders and partners to identify and secure opportunities to deliver gains for people and nature (Practitioner)
  • Build relationships and effective networks both externally and internally to bring in fresh perspectives, approaches and evidence to raise the profile of both your individual specialist work and that of Natural England (Expert)

Person specification

Please refer to Job Description

Qualifications

An under-graduate or post-graduate degree in economics (or environmental economics) or equivalent experience. Applicants that do not hold the required degrees should specify experience and outputs that they have produced that demonstrate that they have an equivalent level of knowledge. (Essential)

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £37,950, Natural England contributes £10,994 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 : Jonathan Starling-Cross
• Email : jonathan.starling-cross@naturalengland.org.uk
• Telephone : 07435 417504

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/6362-6362-Senior-Economist/en-GB

Attachments

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