Natural England are yet to finalise the details of the 2025 Pay Review. This will be backdated to July 2025, and this could involve a review of our current terms and conditions alongside increases to the advertised pay ranges. If there are any changes to what has been advertised the vacancy manager will be able to provide further details ahead of any offers being accepted.

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 Role

This is an exciting opportunity to lead on the oversight of casework risk management in operational delivery, providing the leadership and technical expertise needed to support the effective handling of our highest priority cases.
The role will be based in the Major Planning Casework Team (MPCT) in National Delivery. This multi-disciplinary team works on significant, large-scale, complex casework and strategic programmes, providing expert support and technical leadership to Area Teams and coordinating major infrastructure programmes. Its current portfolio of projects includes High Speed 2 (HS2), Sizewell C, East West Rail and RAPID and other HR/HO casework across England.

In this role, you will play a critical part in leading a consistent and strategic approach to risk management on major casework. You will have a clear understanding of the strategic and political context within which Natural England is operating and provide a focal point for organisational understanding of our highest priority cases. Your oversight of risk will enable you to support and challenge where the risk bar is set and how it is interpreted, promoting consistency and positive environmental outcomes.

You will provide the Operations input to the Defra Infrastructure Board, engaging with DEFRA and our Strategy and Area Teams. This includes identification of cases to bring to the Board, providing effective briefings for the Chief Officer in Operations. You will work with other statutory bodies, Natural England Area Teams and Defra to unlock progress on priority infrastructure projects, working flexibly to support different priority projects as they arise.

You will bring expertise across a range of disciplines and provide thought and functional leadership to the team members working with you. Working closely with MPCT’s Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects Manager This will include overseeing the team’s role in producing the monthly high risk casework report to Natural England’s Executive Committee (NExCo) and Board, and the secretariat for the High Risk Casework Panel (HRCP).

You will take periodic reviews to consider:
• Consistency of risk evaluation.
• Common threads (thematic and/or geographic).
• Prioritisation of risk, recognising that categories are broad.
• Gauging confidence that the right actions are in place.
You will work closely with multiple teams to track and actively support complex cases across the organisation. This will include supporting engagement with case team leads to assess and manage risk; identifying and bringing together the right people from across the organisation to coordinate their input at key decision stages such as legal challenges and examinations.

You will support the team in facilitating case conferences, convening cross-organisational working groups, securing timely legal and technical advice on priority casework, and developing effective stakeholder engagement/handling and communication plans.
complex protected sites and planning casework.