Neighbourhood Plans Officer

37 hours per week

Permanent£33,024 - £36,648 per annum

It’s an exciting time to join Wychavon District Council as we take the council’s corporate Promises forward to 2028.These include a commitment to promote neighbourhood planning and extend coverage of new plans amongst our local communities.

In this new role, you will support parish and town councils across the Wychavon district to designate neighbourhood areas and bring neighbourhood plans to adoption.We are also currently reviewing our local plan and once adopted you will take a lead role in updating existing neighbourhood plans against the new local plan.

The key responsibilities for this role include:

• Supporting the take up amongst parish and town councils to prepare a neighbourhood plan for their area.
• Work with neighbourhood plan groups to draft neighbourhood plans, support the statutory consultation stages, examination and eventual adoption of neighbourhood plans.
• Provide advice to neighbourhood plan groups on how to address local plan policies and the NPPF in neighbourhood plans, as well as drafting locally determined policies and site allocations for new development.
• Provide guidance and support on approaches to achieve successful community engagement and participation in the process.
• Responding to planning queries from the public, developers, district councillors and our development management team in the interpretation and implementation of neighbourhood plan policies when processing planning applications.

About you

The successful candidate will have:

• A planning related degree or equivalent experience
• RTPI membership or eligibility to apply for membership
• A minimum 5 years’ experience within a Town and Country Planning related field.
• Knowledge and understanding of Neighbourhood Planning process and procedures, as well as Local Plan preparation.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills
• An adaptable and flexible approach with the ability to work on a variety of tasks
• Experience of town planning in the community and working with the public and local community representatives.
• Effective project management skills
• The Council is committed to supporting neighbourhood plans which has already led to a significant number of neighbourhood plans being adopted over the last decade.If you are looking for an opportunity to build on this positive picture and roll out coverage to the next level, then this is the position for you!

What we can offer

Our staff are at the heart of what we do, and as a result we are always looking to recruit, develop and retain the very best talent we can find. So, as well as a rewarding career, we offer a range of attractive benefits, such as:

• Excellent pension scheme with employer contributions
• Generous annual leave entitlement with options to purchase additional annual leave
• Committed training programme and development opportunities
• Onsite nursery with 20% staff discount
• Discounted Gym and swim membership
• Health and Wellbeing support and a Free Employee Assistance scheme including access to counselling services
• Cycle to Work scheme
• Employee Discounts with a range of companies including EE and the Kaarp discount scheme.

We are an employer that values face to face communication, collaboration and connection, therefore all our roles have an office-based requirement with some agile working as part of the role.

To discuss the post or for further information, please call Jo Symons on 01386 565334 or Andrew Ford on 01386 565362.

Closing date: Sunday 6 October 2024

Interview date: Thursday 17 October 2024

Please note if we experience a high intake of applications, we may close the role and interview for the position sooner than advertised.