Director of Environment and Regulatory Services

Welcome and thank you for your interest in learning more about City of York Council and our pivotal Director of Environment and Regulatory Services role. As a member of the corporate management team, this role is high profile with an interesting portfolio which directly leads, shapes, and influences the future of York at a pivotal moment in time. We are focused on being “one council” and the ability to work with all other Directors in a collaborative way is essential.

I am seeking an inspirational and visible leader to lead key services across environment, waste, planning, development management, building control, land charges, public protection, emergency planning, and highways whilst fostering a culture that supports the Council’s priorities and values. The role is key to enhancing our city spaces whilst retaining our renowned culture and heritage, mixing the best of tradition and the modern.

The role will be rewarding for a strong leader who will quickly establish credibility with a wide range of stakeholders, the senior leadership team, and external partners. There is an expectation that this role will be influential in growing and developing the City through strong strategic partnership working to collaboratively continue to enhance our success stories. This role will represent the Council regionally and nationally and work closely with York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority to deliver ambitions for the City of York.

One of the core areas of focus is our devolution deal, unlocking funding, and you will support myself and other Directors to achieve this, delivering infrastructure and service improvement. The role will also deliver elements of the new Local Plan and be heavily involved with a number of cutting-edge projects such as The York Central scheme and our city Movement and Place Plan to mention just a few major development projects currently in track as part of York’s gateway to growth.

The role will also involve creating a more community-facing public realm service and establishing our neighbourhood caretakers scheme. We are ambitious in York. We are a progressive, inclusive, and sustainable place, giving the highest priority to the wellbeing of our residents, whilst protecting the culture of this world-famous historic city with UNESCO status. We are also committed to delivering a bold local climate action. In 2019, the city declared a climate emergency and set a target to be a net zero city by 2030. This role will be key in improving the sustainability of the city and working constructively to reach the 2023 net zero target.

York has many accolades. The Council has been recently awarded the most productive council in England by IMPOWER and we continue to ensure we are effective and efficient to build a strong future in everything we do. We aim to become a top 25% of UK economies; a place where productive businesses are good employers and where our residents thrive. This role will be part of this journey.

These accolades and ambitions are underpinned by our commitment to delivering the highest quality environmental services which will enable the residents, businesses, and communities of York to thrive, maintain and enhance our wealth of special green spaces, while also supporting our tourism sector which boasts 9 million visitors a year. For these reasons, I am looking for an outstanding leader who will be just as ambitious for York as they are for themselves.

This broad role will allow you to have real impact, high profile recognition, and be a fantastic platform to further your career in our great city. Equally, you will find that the role will provide professional challenge and complexity. Our size means that we are large enough to provide the rich mix of complexities facing local government, but at the same time, we are small enough to enable you to get things done.

We work in a modern, hybrid way, recognizing the importance of office attendance for key in-person meetings, and to collaborate with other senior leaders/elected members, but with the flexibility needed to fulfill the role. If you are interested in joining our team and are inspired to help lead the next phase of our journey, we look forward to your application.