Principal Town Planner - Policy

Due to a significant increase in planning policy project wins and new opportunities, we are looking to bring in a Principal Planner to work with senior colleagues to manage our growing workload. You will be managing and assisting in key planning policy projects, working alongside multi-disciplinary teams and engaging directly with clients and stakeholders to secure successful planning outcomes. You will be based in our flagship London Aldgate Tower office, though other locations may be considered, including Basingstoke, Bristol, Birmingham, Cambridge, Chesterfield, Leeds, Manchester, Nottingham, and Plymouth. We operate a hybrid working model, giving you the flexibility to balance time between our office and working from home, depending on your needs and the requirements of the role. This position is available on either a full-time or part-time basis, allowing us to tailor the role to suit your individual circumstances.

Overview

Here’s what you’ll do:

Responsibilities

• Team Leadership and Development: Participate in the successful operation and management of the town planning team
• Planning Strategy and Expertise: Lead and assist on key planning policy projects, including supporting local authority policy and strategy development, coordination and delivery of local plans including evidence studies, strategic growth studies, infrastructure strategies and other policy and strategy commissions.
• Offer strategic planning advice to other client and internal teams.
• Provide effective representation for the organisation, developing and managing relationships with clients, local authorities and other stakeholders through project work and through attendance at conferences and other networking events.
• Sharing technical knowledge and excellence.
• Project Management: Ensure projects are delivered successfully on budget and within programme timelines.
• Coordinate multi-disciplinary teams for seamless project execution.
• Quality Assurance and Compliance: Oversee the deliverables produced by the planning policy team.
• Health and Safety: Implement and uphold quality assurance and health and safety principles.
• Business Development: Contribute to the business development strategy, nurturing client relationships.
• Lead and assist in the preparation of commercial tenders to secure new opportunities.

Qualifications

We are looking for an outstanding consultant with proven experience in planning policy and strategy and project management. This is an exciting opportunity for a strategic thinker with strong interpersonal skills and a commitment to delivering high-quality work and driving business growth.

About AECOM

AECOM is a top ten UK planning consultancy by size, employing more than 70 Chartered or Licentiate Planners. The AECOM Planning Practice projects include some of the largest, most complex and high profile development and regeneration projects in the UK for both public and private sector clients. We are a dynamic planning team and work closely with colleagues in other related disciplines, including masterplanning, landscape, environment, sustainability, transport and economics. Examples of our project work include:

• Sub-Regional Spatial Plans – AECOM is a leading provider of sub-regional growth studies and evidence base for plans and policy (including our strategic planning work in the OxCam Arc, Thames Estuary, Hertfordshire and the East Midlands). We have also been thought leaders and enablers for new communities and Garden Towns (including research for MHCLG, Local Government Association and Town and Country Planning Association).
• Local Plans – Providing local planning authorities with local plan evidence and support is a key area in the policy team. We have worked on the local plans of over 100 authorities in the last decade. This includes the full range of evidence base studies, secondments, critical friend support and coordinating multi-disciplinary teams to provide evidence to inform and test planning policy at all stages of plan-making.
• Strategic Masterplans – We have masterplanned new Garden Communities totalling almost 100,000 homes (with current examples including Southern Manydown in Basingstoke and Naas North West Quadrant in Ireland). Our work continues to create places where people want to live and invest over the long term.
• Neighbourhood Planning – Since 2011, we have supported several hundred local communities with their neighbourhood plan making. We offer expertise across all aspects of the plan-making process – from scoping and robust evidence base production to stakeholder engagement, appraisal and option development to plan production, design, delivery, adoption, monitoring; as well as overall project and process management.

Joining AECOM will provide you with opportunities for career progression within a positive culture where learning and development is actively supported and promoted.