Planning Policy For Place Lead in Walthamstow

Organisation: London Borough of Waltham Forest

Salary: £57,402 – £62,766 (PO7 - PO8)

Contract Type: Full-time Permanent

Working hours per week: 36

Application Deadline: 08/09/2026

Proposed Interview Date(s): W/C 21st September 2026

Reference: 2258

About Us: Bursting with culture, energy, and opportunity, the London Borough of Waltham Forest is a fantastic and exciting place to work. We are a highly ambitious borough. Driven by culture and the innate creativity of our residents, we have developed new and innovative ways to build our communities. Our Council is relentlessly resident-focused, insight-led, digitally driven and commercially minded; a Council focused on meeting the needs of our existing and future residents.

London Borough of Waltham Forest is one of the Mayor of London’s Good Work Standard employers. This accreditation is proof of our commitment to creating a healthy, fair and inclusive workplace. This includes fair pay and conditions, workplace well-being, skills and progression and diversity and recruitment.

About the role: We are looking for an experienced, ambitious and creative planning professional who is passionate about shaping places and delivering positive change through planning policy. The successful candidate will lead the Council's Policy for Place function, taking a strategic role in the preparation, implementation, monitoring and review of the borough's Local Plan and wider planning policy framework. Working across a broad portfolio, you will help shape supplementary planning guidance, design codes, masterplans, planning briefs and neighbourhood planning initiatives, ensuring that planning policy supports the delivery of high-quality homes, jobs, public spaces and infrastructure across the borough.

The focus of the team over the coming years will be on implementing our ambitious adopted Local Plan, preparing for future reviews and responding to a rapidly evolving national and regional planning agenda. This role will lead on commissioning and managing evidence studies, undertaking public consultation and engagement, monitoring policy performance and providing expert planning policy advice to senior officers, elected members, developers, community organisations and residents.

The right candidate will be passionate about planning and placemaking, with a strong understanding of planning policy and the plan-making process. They will be comfortable working collaboratively across disciplines, communicating complex ideas clearly and building positive relationships with colleagues, communities and partners. Experience of working within a political environment, managing complex projects and helping to shape policy solutions to contemporary challenges such as climate change, biodiversity recovery and sustainable growth will be highly advantageous.

In this role you will work across the wider Place and Design Team alongside planning policy, design, conservation and biodiversity specialists, supporting our matrix working approach and helping to build skills and resilience across the service. The role reports to the Head of Strategic Planning and Design and will have responsibility for supervising specialist officers and managing consultancy commissions where required.

The Place and Design Team work to ensure that growth is inclusive, creating a fairer borough and to deliver the new homes and jobs that the borough needs. We are committed to engaging the borough’s diverse communities at all stages of the development cycle to ensure that future development brings the benefits they need. The team works closely with stakeholders – whether strategic authorities, investors or developers – to make sure that development contributes to wider ambitions, enhancing biodiversity, mitigating flood risk, and tackling the Climate Emergency head on. We work within an inclusive structure that rejects silos, embraces sharing and learning and works flexibly and collaboratively. We have adopted a matrix working approach that assembles the right teams for the right projects, building resilience and skills. We also work collaboratively with other teams across the council, including Development Management, Area Regeneration, Employment, Business and Skills, Culture, Housing, Property, Capital Delivery, Strategy & Design, and Highways.

We have built a reputation as an innovative, positive, proactive team that delivers excellent results with work produced in-house. The recent achievements of the team include adopting our Local Plan and having our Site Allocations Plan pass examination, contributing to award-winning buildings and public spaces, developing the Waltham Forest Design Awards, producing high-quality guidance such as the Residential Alterations and Retrofit SPD and the Leyton Mills SPD, as well as rejuvenating our Local Heritage List.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead the preparation, implementation, monitoring and review of Waltham Forest's Local Plan and wider planning policy framework, ensuring compliance with national, regional and local planning requirements.
• Lead the development of supplementary planning documents, design codes, masterplans, planning briefs, neighbourhood plans and other place-based planning frameworks that support sustainable and inclusive growth across the borough.
• Provide strategic planning policy leadership on key priorities including climate resilience, biodiversity recovery, active travel, healthy placemaking, heritage conservation and sustainable development.
• Commission and manage evidence base studies, technical assessments and specialist consultancy projects, ensuring a robust evidence base for policy development and delivery.
• Monitor the effectiveness of planning policies and statutory strategies, ensuring planning documents remain up to date and respond to emerging legislation, opportunities and challenges.
• Provide expert planning policy advice and guidance to senior officers, elected members, developers, communities and external stakeholders on a wide range of planning and regeneration matters.
• Lead public consultation, engagement and statutory plan-making processes, ensuring meaningful involvement of residents, partners and stakeholders in shaping the borough's future.
• Build and maintain effective partnerships with regional bodies, neighbouring authorities, community organisations and other stakeholders to support the successful delivery of planning policy objectives.
• Contribute specialist expertise to cross-disciplinary projects across the Place and Design Team, helping to deliver high-quality, sustainable and inclusive place-making outcomes.
• Support, mentor and develop colleagues within the service, promoting collaboration, innovation and continuous improvement.

Qualifications and Requirements:

• RTPI recognised degree level qualification in Town Planning or equivalent.
• Eligibility or membership of the Royal Town Planning Institute.
• Advanced user of Microsoft Office, especially Word and Excel and other relevant software enabling the review and maintenance of the Local Plan process.
• Experienced user of GIS Software such as StatMap and QGIS.

How to Apply: Interested candidates are invited to submit their applications online by pressing the ‘Apply’ button below. This includes a supporting statement that outlines how your skills and experience make you a good candidate for this vacancy. We reserve the right to close this vacancy early if we receive sufficient applications for the role. Therefore, if you are interested, please submit your application as early as possible.

Equal Opportunity Employer: Waltham Forest is a diverse borough where diversity is valued and is integral to both service delivery and employment of its staff. The Council is proud of its rich mix of communities and as the largest employer in the area, it works hard to respond to the changing needs of its population. We use our statutory duties on race, gender and disability equality and best practice in respect of age, faith and sexual orientation to ensure equality of opportunity in the workplace.

To support the above and reduce the risk of bias in its recruitment activities, the council is operating an anonymous shortlisting process, which hides personal information that can identify individuals until their application has been considered for shortlisting. The council also operates a scheme whereby, for jobs graded up to and including scale SO2, internal candidates are considered first. This includes those candidates who self-identify as having a disability for the purposes of the Disability Confident scheme.

We are keen to support employees to balance their working life with other commitments. Therefore, wherever possible, we will consider working arrangements that suit an individual's personal circumstances whilst still meeting the needs of the Council. If you would like to discuss the possible flexible working options that might be applicable to this role, please contact the person named below or feel free to discuss this during your interview.

Contact Information: If you have any questions about this vacancy or the application process, please contact Conor Keappock, Acting Head of Strategic Planning & Design at conor.keappock@walthamforest.gov.uk