Head Of Planning

This is a Full Time Permanent Position. Two opportunities are being recruited to within Hull City Council as it positions itself to accelerate the production of its New Local Plan and deliver the commitments within the Hull and East Yorkshire Growth Plan and City Centre Vision. Hull is a city going places and is recognised by National Geographic as a top 10 city to visit globally. If you want to be central to delivering, there are two roles available to lead this change and be a key part of the team focused on delivering long term positive change.

Hull is the city at the heart of the Humber Energy Estuary and is the only City with an Offshore Wind Turbine Blade manufacturing centre in the UK, a previous city of culture and has a growing Hydrogen sector. If you are interested in these roles, please complete the application form or contact Alex Codd via email (preferred method of contact) or telephone if you wish to discuss any role in more detail.

ROLE AND PURPOSE

The post holder heads up and leads the City’s Planning Department including the Development Management, Planning Enforcement, flood management, Urban Design and Conservation, building control, archaeology and planning policy arms of the Council’s Economic Development and Regeneration service, the purpose of which is:

• To manage and provide a comprehensive and effective Development Management service, to enable it to be the catalyst for the development of an attractive, vibrant and sustainable 21st century City, promoting the benefit of a sustainable economy, society and environment by achieving programme integration and maximisation, corporately within the City and externally with key partners at a national, regional, sub-regional and local level.
• To influence and derive maximum outcomes from external policy and to ensure the service adds value to the regeneration, economic development, environment, housing market and transportation objectives of the City through the enabling of appropriate development.
• To act as the City’s ‘Champion’ for sustainable development and delivery of sustainable communities.
• To deputise for the Assistant Director, Economic Development & Regeneration.

PRINCIPAL ACCOUNTABILITIES:

• Strategy - Leads on issues of professional planning competence for the City. Ensures a co-ordinated development management function through the integrated operation of the development management, sustainability, building control, enforcement, conservation, archaeology and urban design teams.
• In relation to the Development Management function, the post holder has full autonomy for the high levels of delegation of decision making on applications and has full responsibility to the Planning Committee and the Authority for the discharge of the Planning function.
• Ensures the statutory functions of the service and the Planning Committee are effectively discharged and timely and appropriate professional advice is obtained to inform decision making.
• Delivers annual planning training workshops to planning committee members and their deputies to enable them to discharge their responsibilities.
• Provide strategic direction, prioritisation of actions, target setting and evaluation of outputs/outcomes with respect to policy and strategic frameworks and programmes.
• Represents the City Council at Board level on external partnerships.
• Ensures that the timelines and content of the Local Plan and associated documents delivers the council’s objectives.
• Provides leadership and support to managers and staff and develops and maintains good employee relations through effective communication, consultation, application of personnel policies and development of good practice.
• Provides a leading role for the teams within the Development Management and Planning Policy functions, setting policy and practice to ensure a coordinated and integrated function and producing a Service Delivery Plan for the areas which includes timescales for the production of planning documents and the need to meet critical policy framework timescales.

Customer Focus - Strong engagement with the business sector across the city to ensure the planning service meets their aspirations and delivers significant projects in a timely manner whilst balancing environmental, social and community aspirations. Highly visible in the public domain speaking at local, regional and national events about planning matters in Hull. Engages regularly with the chief planner at Communities and Local Government to ensure planning policy at a national level evolves to the benefit of Hull.

Leads the formulation of Planning policy in conjunction with the City Economic Development and Regeneration Manager and City Neighbourhoods and Housing Manager to support the development of a sustainable economy, environment and connected communities. Develops, reviews and provides best practice in customer service delivery; is proactive in engaging with customers to ensure the service meets their needs; and markets the competitive elements of the service to ensure they meet their business targets. Promotes the planning service externally through the chamber of commerce and business networks to ensure the service meets the business community’s aspirations. Holds regular briefings with the planning committee members, planning committee chairman, and other Committees as necessary in the formulation of planning policy.

Performance Management - Develops, reviews and manages a performance management framework to ensure effectiveness, to monitor and evaluate service delivery and to demonstrate outcomes and continual improvements. Ensures that resources available to deliver objectives are matched by income generation.

Is an active member of the Economic Development and Regeneration service Leadership Team raising all matters of significance from the planning service and feeding back key messages corporately to the planning staff. Leads planning managers meetings and presents to the whole planning service on performance and budgetary matters. Closely manages income targets and continually reviews opportunities to maximise income. Responsible for the ultimate sign off of Building control, Humber field Archaeology and planning fee charges. Reports monthly on high risk items and manages budget to deal with income variations. Secures external funding to ensure delivery of projects and cover salary costs as necessary. Sets fee targets and ensures income is achieved in accordance with agreed targets. Authorisation of all expenditure within the planning service and manages this expenditure in accordance with fee income.

This post carries a very high degree of autonomy and consequently accountability, with regard to decision making. It requires a degree of creativity and originality in identifying opportunities to develop integrated development solutions based on the physical and ‘connective’ infrastructure of the City which will benefit the economic, social and physical regeneration in the City, sub-region and the region. The postholder will make decisions on political support e.g. lobbying.

The Postholder will conduct high level negotiations with senior public and private sector executives to secure opportunities and funding to support key programmes to develop the City’s economic, social and environmental well-being, and to support a wide range of City Council and partner programmes. The postholder is frequently required to make important decisions about strategy, policy, in order to safeguard the Council’s and partners’ interests based on a comprehensive research and evaluation programme of Council and partner activities and issues. There is a continuing responsibility to provide key advice to Members when they are representing the Council’s interests.

Responsible on own authority for spending within set budget and ensures the continual review of service delivery, implementing Council policy and practice and researching and developing improvements using national best practice. Ensures that the service has a performance management framework that informs the corporate and national systems by ensuring the timely and effective provision of management information to include monitoring of determination times and appeal success rates. Carries out long term planning of budgets, staffing and work programmes for the effective delivery of services to meet City Council and Government targets, including a Service Delivery Plan and ensures managers produce team service delivery plans for their areas. Shapes the planning service to respond to changing national legislation, development activity, city priorities and fee generating opportunities.

Leadership - Is part of the senior advisor team to the Chief Executive, Leader and Deputy Leader on all town planning matters within the council. Provides the main source of leadership to section managers in professional competence; implements Council policy on human resources and equalities and develops continual improvement in service delivery to ensure access to services by hard to reach groups.

Responsible for ensuring teams produce work programmes and that their work is focused on Corporate aims and objectives and that deadlines are met. Ensures the ‘firewall’ between the Director of Regeneration and the post is met in terms of the independence of the Planning function. Deputise for the Assistant Director, Economic Development & Regeneration. Represents Kingston upon Hull City Council and partners interests in relation to strategic issues and developments at local sub-regional, regional, national and International level and contributes to future policy formation and alignment with regard to sustainability, economic and physical regeneration, learning, environment, neighbourhood planning, strategic planning and regeneration programmes in order to achieve the Corporate Objectives of the City Council and partners.

Statutory Obligations - Responsible for ensuring the professional competence of the Planning Service for the City by researching and implementing best practice and legislation with wide discretion and minimal managerial direction. Advises Council on implications and actions necessary. Responsible on own authority for decisions delegated by the Council’s Constitution and the Planning Committee within broadly defined policy and, with approval of Assistant Director, Economic Development & Regeneration, for recommendations to Committees, Cabinet and Full Council. Determines the necessary level of planning control required in different parts of the city through the use of Article 4 directions, neighbourhood plans, enterprise zones, Local Development Orders, and Area Action Plans. Ensures the Council fulfills its role as a Local Planning Authority, Local Building Control Authority, lead local Flood Authority and Archaeological partnership through adhering to the necessary legislative requirements.

Emergency Management and Response - In fulfilment of its statutory requirements under the Civil Contingencies Act, the Council operates an out of hours emergency response rota of which this post is part. The post holder will be required to assist in any emergency situations when an incident is declared.

Compensation Grades: GRADES 14. Pay Ranges: £74,287.00 - £74,287.00. Job Classifications: 3- Not Politically Restricted - Designated As Not Politically Sensitive (Politically Restricted Posts), Casual - (Travel Allowance Policy), No - (Childcare Disqualification Requirement), Post Fulfilling Statutory Duty - (Statutory Post)

Benefits of Working of Hull City Council:

• A competitive salary
• An excellent pension through the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS)
• Initially 23 days annual leave depending on length of service. You will also get eight public holidays per year, and three additional days off, one in May/August and one during the Christmas/New year period
• Career development and learning experiences from a range of training courses and learning methods
• Supportive and forward-thinking culture
• Great career development opportunities

Please ensure that you complete and submit your application by midnight prior to the closing date. Please ensure that your application demonstrates how you meet the essential criteria against the person specification as listed in the job description. We are committed to increasing the diversity, equality, and inclusion within our workforce to represent the people we serve and build an environment in which everyone can feel like they belong. We encourage people from all backgrounds to apply. We adopt a ‘name blind’ approach to shortlisting. Recruiting managers will not have access to personal information, including your name and contact details, until a shortlisting decision has been made. Equality monitoring information is not accessible by recruiting managers at any stage.

We reserve the right to amend the dates associated with this advert, which may include closing the advert early where required. The Council is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults and expects all employees and volunteers to share this commitment. Online searches, including social media, may be carried out as part of the recruitment process.