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.
Our Role
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
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.
Job description
The Team
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.
The Role
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.
Continuous Improvement
- 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.
Benefits
At Natural England, we support a healthy work-life balance by offering full-time, part-time, and flexible working arrangements.
We provide excellent opportunities for career progression, training, and development tailored to your role. This includes ten days annually for personal learning and development, plus three additional days for volunteering.
You’ll receive a generous leave allowance of 33 days per year (pro rata), access to the Civil Service Pension scheme with a 28.97% employer contribution, and a range of benefits such as shopping discounts and a cycle-to-work scheme. Staff can also join the Civil Service Sport club for discounts on sports, leisure activities, and social events.
We are committed to fairness, equality, and inclusivity. Our employee-led diversity networks help foster a welcoming environment where everyone feels valued and supported.
Locations
Natural England has adopted hybrid working – which means our staff work from a flexible range of locations, encompassing home, offices (ours and our partners) and relevant sites. All new staff will be formally linked to one of our 25 offices across England, and the expectation is that all new staff will be able to access their local office to be part of the community of staff in their geographical area. Staff are expected to attend their associated office for 20% of their contractual hours.
Staff members are required to carry out all their duties working in this way and cannot do so from an overseas location at any time. Travel expenses will be paid if work-related travel is required but does not apply to travel between home and your associated office.
National team roles can be linked with any Natural England office while Area Team roles will be linked with an office in the relevant geographic area.
View a map of our office locations here: online map of Natural England office locations.
Pay
It is Natural England policy to employ at the entry point of the salary range.
You will become an active member of the relevant local leadership community, the group of senior Natural England staff in each of the localities across England who we ask to provide support and co-ordination for the local group of staff.
Closing date: 15 February 2026.
