6528 - Freshwater Senior Officer

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.

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

• 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.

The Role

The role involves using your ecological and regulatory knowledge and a problem‑solving approach to provide leadership and coordinating the delivery across the breadth of work related to the freshwater environment within the team. The post holder will work closely with other senior and principal officers, locally and nationally including the Strategic solutions staff, to contribute to the wider strategic water programme in Natural England and the Area Team Nature Recovery ambitions. You will support colleagues across the Area Team, providing technical advice and support, leadership and effective networks to support this. This role will also collaborate with staff in neighbouring Area Teams to encourage wider nature recovery and bring resilience by improving integration of water work at regional scale. You will work closely with partners and stakeholders providing strategic engagement and relationship management – such as with the Environment Agency, Water Companies, Local Authorities and wider water stakeholders. As part of the leadership team, you will contribute to building capability and capacity within the team by supporting staff development and sharing knowledge gained through national networks.

Working for the Thames Solent Area Team

The Thames Solent area covers many counties; Berkshire, Buckinghamshire (including Milton Keynes), Hampshire, Isle of Wight, London, Oxfordshire and Surrey. All of which have a diverse geology and natural environment, rich in history and habitats. Features include extensive areas and mosaics of wetlands, heathlands, coastal habitats and marine sites, ancient woods and pasture, chalk river catchments and estuaries. They are complemented by the rural nature of our agricultural landscapes. Partnerships for Nature Recovery are at the heart of everything we do. We work with a wide range of partners and stakeholders, including Water Companies, Local Authorities, Water Resources Southeast, The Environment Agency, Wildlife Trusts, Rivers Trusts, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, major landowners, farmers and our local communities. We want to help support the restoration of flourishing landscapes that are a source of rich biodiversity, pride, employment, access and enjoyment.

Key Tasks / Principal Accountabilities

• Provide oversight and direction of the team’s engagement and input into Strategic Water Planning.
• Taking an ecosystem and hydro‑ecological process approach to identify and secure opportunities to address the challenges affecting our water environment e.g. climate change, drought, flooding, abstraction, pollution.
• Provide technical advice and leadership for the team on hydrological issues to build resilient ecosystems.
• Seek effective solutions to long standing freshwater issues working with others to implement them, using innovative and novel approaches where appropriate.
• Commission and/or deliver work to build our evidence base to support nature recovery.
• Work with colleagues from across the organisation, both local and national, and lead on technical input into major water projects and/or casework including Discretionary Advice Services.
• Strategic engagement and relationship management of key partners (such as the Environment Agency, Water Companies, Local Planning Authorities, stakeholder groups and organisations) to maximize joined‑up and effective delivery of opportunities.
• Build and lead effective networks to facilitate and influence thinking in this area, building resilience and sharing information across the freshwater team, Thames Solent Area Team and neighbouring Area Teams.
• Provide risk oversight and act as the escalation point for freshwater related high‑risk casework in the area team in accordance with NE’s schemes of delegation.
• Work with all our work areas (e.g. protected sites, integrated farm advice, sustainable development and marine) and support our Officers to deliver water outcomes across all our work to ultimately deliver nature recovery at scale.
• Provide technical input where possible / relevant into Protected Sites Strategies in the Area.
• Provide mentoring and training to grow the capability and capacity of our teams to provide technical water advice, and create resilience in this work area.