Policy Manager (Local Authority Resilience)

Summary Historic England is the public organisation that brings new life to heritage to build a better future for every place and everyone. Historic England has a fantastic opportunity for you to join us as our Policy Manager (Local Authority Resilience). This is a full time, permanent position. The location of this role is either York, Manchester, Newcastle, Birmingham, Cambridge, Swindon, Bristol or Portsmouth, inclusive with hybrid working. Please note there is some travel to Historic England office locations for team meetings and travel for sector meetings. We offer a wide benefits package including a competitive defined benefit pension scheme to which we make 28.97% employer contributions, a generous 28 days holiday, corporate discounts, free entry into English Heritage sites across the country and development opportunities to ensure you achieve your goals. What you will be doing Working to the Head of Sector Resilience, the Policy Manager (Local Government Resilience) will advise on and lead development of Historic England’s policy and programme work to improve the capacity and capability of Local and Strategic Authorities heritage services, enabling them to make effective, confident and consistent decisions regarding the historic environment supporting growth, place-shaping and climate resilience, whilst responding to changes in the planning landscape. You will support the Head of Sector Resilience to lead collaboration across Historic England teams, building on a strong awareness of current and future policy changes and local government needs, to provide strategic direction for Historic England’s local government resilience programme. You will engage and negotiate with relevant stakeholders, including MHCLG, DCMS, Local Government Association, heritage sector and industry bodies to ensure Historic England’s support offer is highly collaborative and complements wider support available. You will identify and maximise opportunities to access additional funding to grow the offer where possible. Who we are looking for Experience of developing sector support and/or training programmes with the ideally within the context of the historic environment or local government Experience of intelligence collection activities such as designing surveys, running focus groups, analysing, reporting and publishing collected data Experience of building effective partnerships and managing strategic relationships An understanding of the role local authorities play in managing change within the historic environment, and the challenges they face An understanding of the current and emerging planning policy landscape and other government agendas such as devolution and local government reorganisation Good written communication skills for different media and purposes including for advocacy and engagement, briefing and report writing, analytical analysis reporting Please note your application will be scored and assessed against the above criteria. We are an equal opportunity employer which values diversity and inclusion. If you have a disability or neurodiversity, we would be happy to discuss reasonable adjustments to the job with you. Having won the Gold Award from MIND for workplace wellbeing in seven consecutive years, we also recognise the importance of a healthy work-life balance. We are an inclusive employer and believe that flexible working options are for everyone. We want to make sure our working arrangements don’t prevent anyone from joining us because of their personal circumstances. We also want to provide you with the best balance in your home and work life that we can. We are open to considering options including job sharing, part-time working, compressed hours working and different working locations, including hybrid working.