Senior Officer - Development Plan Delivery - ( Ref : 6383 ) in London

This is an exciting opportunity to join a busy team at the forefront of delivery, as Natural England seeks to deliver major government planning reforms, supporting our ambition for a healthy natural environment that underpins sustainable growth, supporting greener homes and infrastructure that create healthier nature-rich places for people to live, learn, work and play.

The Major Planning Casework Team sits within National Delivery and provides national leadership, coordination and support for Natural England’s engagement with major planning casework, including development plans, nationally significant projects and other complex, high‑risk casework. The team works across the organisation, and external partners to ensure planning systems support nature recovery and achieve Natural England’s ambition for thriving nature for people and planet.

Development plans (Local Plans and Spatial Development Strategies) represent some of Natural England’s most strategically important planning work, shaping the future of places before development proposals come forward. National Delivery plays a critical role in overseeing a pipeline of development plan work delivered by area teams, ensuring we provide high‑quality, timely advice, prioritising our resource and enabling growth and nature recovery through strategic advice.

This role provides national coordination, tracking and operational support for Natural England’s development plan work, with a particular focus on resource planning, data management, pipeline oversight and enabling the effective deployment of specialist CSD resource.

The Postholder Will:

• Maintain and continuously improve national tools and processes for tracking a development plan pipeline, including risk, deadlines, prioritisation and progress.
• Provide operational support to Area Teams, helping them plan workloads, understand upcoming pressures and deliver high‑quality advice.
• Work closely with the Principal Officer (Development Plan Delivery) to coordinate the deployment of specialists, ensuring the right skills and knowledge are available at the right time.
• Monitor the balance of specialist resource between development plan casework and development management casework, supporting decisions on prioritisation.
• Support national reporting, briefings and assurance activities relating to development plan delivery.

This is a pivotal enabling role that ensures the organisation operates effectively, decisions are based on good data, and scarce expertise is used efficiently.

Key Accountabilities

• Pipeline Management and Operational Tracking
  • Develop, maintain and update national tools, trackers and dashboards for Local Plans and SDS, ensuring consistent, accurate and timely information.
  • Identify emerging deadlines, risks and capacity challenges and escalate to the Principal Officer or operational managers as appropriate.
  • Support national forecasting and forward planning for development plan delivery.
• Coordination of Specialist Resource
  • Work with specialist team leads and specialists to understand upcoming workloads, skills required and available capacity.
  • Ensure specialist advisers have clear expectations, appropriate briefings and sufficient time to prepare high‑quality plan advice.
  • Track the deployment of specialist expertise across development plans alongside development management casework, helping ensure balanced and effective use of specialist capacity.
• Support to Area Teams
  • Provide operational support and coordination to help Area Teams plan workloads, meet deadlines and manage peaks in demand.
  • Act as a point of contact for operational queries relating to pipeline data, prioritisation tools and national processes.
  • Share good practice, insight and lessons learned across Area Teams.
• Assurance, Reporting and Governance
  • Prepare and support briefings for senior leaders, including national updates on development plan progress, risks and resource needs.
  • Support consistent application of NE standards and governance in plan‑making casework.
  • Maintain clear audit trails and accurate information to support reporting to Defra, MHCLG and other partners.
  • Support reviews of operational processes and digital tools, identifying improvements to increase efficiency or quality.
  • Contribute to developing national guidance, templates and standard approaches for development plan casework.

Knowledge, Skills And Experience

• Strong understanding of the planning system and development plan processes (Local Plans, SDS, SEA/HRA) and technical evidence needed to inform plan-making and advice on plan-making.
• Experience in operational delivery, tracking systems, workload planning or project coordination.
• Ability to interpret data, manage information and produce actionable insight.
• Good understanding of Natural England’s operational context and the roles of Area Teams and specialists.
• Effective communicator with the ability to explain technical, process or resource issues clearly to a range of audiences.
• Strong organisational skills, attention to detail and ability to manage multiple competing priorities.
• Ability to build positive working relationships across teams and disciplines.

Strategic Outcomes for Nature

Our strategy is framed through four strategic outcomes. Each of these outcomes reinforces and amplifies the others, and together they address environmental, social and economic actions critical to thriving 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.

Find out more about the work of Natural England at Natural England’s Strategy: Recovering Nature for Growth, Health and Security - GOV.UK.

How To Apply

We welcome and encourage applications from all communities. Natural England is accredited to the Disability Confident Scheme, which denotes organisations which have a positive attitude towards disabled people. Disabled applicants who meet the minimum requirements for the role at the shortlisting stage are guaranteed an invitation to interview.

If you require a reasonable adjustment at interview, or there is anything else you would like the panel to take into consideration, you should notify us of this at application stage where possible, or well in advance of your interview. We now provide primary interview questions in advance for all formal recruitments.

This vacancy uses competency-based assessment. We will assess you against the competencies below during the selection process:

• Technical Skills and Knowledge
• Putting People at the Heart of the Environment
• Personal Effectiveness
• Work Delivery

When completing the application form you should present relevant examples using the STAR format. Give us an example of how you have demonstrated the competency (which can be work related or from another area of your life) and tell us about the Situation, the specific Task you had to undertake, the specific Actions you took, and the Result (both immediate and in a wider context) of your Action.

Please note that STAR format is not required when answering a Technical Skills & Knowledge competency. Examples should be given in no more than 250 words for each competency.

If you are successful at the shortlisting stage, you will be invited to attend an interview via MS Teams or a suitable alternative, where you will be asked to give examples for all competencies as set out in the Job Description.

Please note: Artificial Intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application. However, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.