Area Team Leader North

About Us:

THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF SERENA’S VISION 

Regeneration, Planning and Economy in Westminster City Council is a world of extraordinary stories. Where innovative and open-minded people bring everything to the cause. Even expertise from surprising places. 

Take Serena. She is an absolute force of nature at the heart of our Church Street regeneration. And she puts the residents first in everything. Serena’s vision is clear. Regeneration isn’t just about bricks and concrete. It’s about communities. It’s about the environment. It’s about the lives of people and how they feel about where they call home. Serena is their advocate, making sure residents’ voices aren’t just heard, but drive the changes we’re making. The future is safe in her hands. 

The Role:

As a Town Planning Team Leader you can make your own powerful contribution to our success as you work to implement the City Plan for Westminster and lead your team’s day-to-day management and operational functions. Directing the quality, quantity, project management and timeliness of planning applications, listed building consents and other statutory application processes, you’ll contribute to an efficient pre-application advice service while ensuring consistency across all our Area Teams.

Committed to inspiring, motivating and coaching your team members to do their best work, it will be your task to ensure a culture of continual learning within the team, and showcase and share knowledge across the wider service. Setting and reviewing the correct professional, operational and strategic standards, and providing the necessary support to enable your people to deliver, you’ll also promote positive initiatives to diversify the team.

You’ll have a wide range of additional responsibilities – these include planning ahead, assessing risk and ensuring full compliance with target performance objectives relating to the quality, timeliness and productivity of the team’s workload. We’ll also expect you to deliver continual improvement through innovation in digital planning and a culture of learning and skills development, and work to build diverse teams and excellent customer service. In addition, you’ll manage budgets in an efficient and innovative way to provide value for money services, devise business cases for change, and identify funding opportunities.

About You:

With a qualification in Town and Country Planning or a related area, and eligible for chartered membership of the Royal Town Planning Institute or a similar professional body, you’ll have led a development management function in the public sector, or possess experience of using development management processes and decision making methods to lead a successful team. We’ll expect you to have worked as a presiding officer on a planning committee and represented a council at public inquiries, courts or other legal forums, and you should also be capable of acting as a specialist advisor on strategic and local town planning matters.

An excellent collaborator with the ability to define and implement transformational change, you’ll have a proven track record of innovation and high performing team building, and of creating and inspiring diverse and inclusive teams. With extensive understanding of the implementation of the latest Town and Country Planning legislation, regulation and guidance, you should also be capable of leading strategic and major projects involving large scale redevelopment and regeneration initiatives.

It's important that you have extensive knowledge of affordable housing, sustainability, community engagement, conservation areas, listed buildings and the public realm, and he ready to use your excellent communication skills to work positively within a political structure. A strong negotiator with an analytical approach to problem solving, we’ll also expect you to be capable of building relationships and partnerships with community stakeholders and a range of bodies including Historic England, government departments, regional government and local, regional and national amenity societies.

The Council is committed to achieving diverse shortlists to support our desire to increase the number of staff from underrepresented groups in our workforce. We especially encourage applications from a global majority background and, while the role is open to all applicants, we will utilise the positive action provisions of the Equality Act 2010 to appoint a candidate from a global majority background where there is a choice between two candidates of equal merit. If you are from a Global Majority background you can self-declare this to the hiring manager as part of our positive action commitments.

What We Offer:

Westminster is an amazing place. We are home to more than 200,000 residents from all backgrounds, over 50,000 vibrant and vital businesses and three-quarters-of-a-million people work in Westminster. 

Westminster City Council’s strategy is to work towards a Fairer Westminster. A Fairer Westminster is one in which our communities are at the heart of our decision-making and help to determine the city’s future. By working directly with our communities and other partners, we can build a more inclusive city that celebrates our diverse communities, and where residents, workers and visitors from all backgrounds will feel welcome and safe.

At Westminster City Council, we pride ourselves on being an inclusive workplace and employer of choice. We encourage and welcome applications from people from all backgrounds and aim to have a workforce that, at all levels, represents the communities we serve. We champion equality, diversity, inclusion and wellbeing and aim to create a workplace where everyone feels valued, has a sense of belonging and is empowered to be their best, that is the Westminster Way. To find out more about how we do this visit https://www.westminster.gov.uk/health-and-social-care/public-health-strategy-policies-and-reports/equality-duties

As a forward thinking Council we appreciate that people work in different ways, therefore our staff benefit from working a range of flexible working patterns as well as Agile working.

The Council is a Disability Confident Employer. If you have declared a disability in your application, we guarantee an interview if you meet the essential criteria of the job. If you are invited for interview, you will be asked if you need any reasonable adjustments in order to attend, and we will make these wherever possible.

Closing date: 07 July 2024.
Contact details for Informal discussion: Deirdra Armsby, Director of Town Planning and Building, via email: DARMSBY@WESTMINSTER.GOV.UK