Site Manager West

Job Title: Nature Recovery Manager

Advertised Salary: £48,500 + Car Cash Allowance (£450 per month) + Benefits

Base Location: Home-based with requirements for national travel

Overview:

We're the charity who look after and bring to life 2,000 miles of waterways across England and Wales, because we believe that life is better by water. Every role across the Trust plays its part in transforming our canals and rivers into spaces where local people want to spend time and feel better, bringing wellbeing benefits to millions.

We currently have an opportunity for a Nature Recovery Manager within our national Environment ＆ Climate Action Team within the Strategy and Impact Directorate. The S&I directorate analyses current and emerging policy and sets the Trust’s strategy and standards for regional delivery across all the Trust’s activities. The Environment and Climate action team is responsible for delivering the Trust’s strategy and policy on all environment and climate related sustainability issues, including environmental compliance as a minimum, improvement of our protected sites and achieving a net gain in biodiversity across our canal network.

Reporting to the Head of Environment and Climate action, the Nature Recovery Manager will be responsible for developing, implementing, and monitoring the Trusts position and progress on nature recovery. The role includes delivering a long-term action plan to move more of our protected sites to favourable condition and collaborating with other teams across the Trust to develop, fund and deliver projects that increase biodiversity and the abundance of protected species across the network.

Knowledge, Skills/Qualifications & Experience

Key Accountabilities:

• Develop, implement and maintain the Trust’s nature recovery strategy
• Develop and own a national action plan to improve the condition of the Trust’s protected sites to meet the requirements set out in the Environmental Improvement Plan 2023.
• Develop, deliver, and report on a programme of projects and activities enabling the Trust to demonstrate its biodiversity commitments as a 28G authority and that it is delivering an overall net gain in biodiversity across the network. This includes working closely with teams delivering mandatory Biodiversity Net Gain.
• Collaborate with the Fundraising, Marketing, Campaigns and Enterprise functions to deliver high quality, fundable nature recovery projects.
• Ownership of Trust standards relating to protected sites and biodiversity; working with internal technical experts and the Trust’s legal team to ensure that all Trust standards relating to protected sites and biodiversity meet regulatory requirements.
• Working with the Trust’s operational and delivery teams to ensure that standards are delivered and align with business processes through a process of assurance checking.
• Manage external technical input where requires (e.g. from consultants)
• Assist in the investigation of environmental incidents, near misses and ensure the production and dissemination of key learnings
• Producing progress reports (quarterly/ annually/ as necessary) for Defra and the wider public as well as input into our annual accounts and ESG reports
• Producing case studies and other examples of best practice for internal and external audiences
• Developing and delivering biodiversity and nature recovery training
• Displaying the Trust values and behaviours at all times.
• Ensuring that diversity and inclusion are integrated into all aspects of Trust life and promoting inclusion by challenging behaviour, practices, actions, or decisions that are counter to the objectives of the Trust’s policies and values.

Knowledge, Experience & Skills:

• Full Member CIEEM (MCIEEM) qualification or equivalent
• Broad understanding of key policy drivers for improving biodiversity in UK organisations, e.g Environmental Improvement Plan 2023, TNFD etc.
• Demonstrable experience of developing and implementing opportunities to improve nature within an organisation with multiple objectives and environmental aspects.
• Practical understanding of the UK regulatory frameworks for biodiversity, habitats, and protected species
• Working knowledge of the key metrics tools for Biodiversity Net Gain (Defra Metric 4.0, UK Habitats and MoRPH) and how these can be used to demonstrate improvements in biodiversity.
• Experience with working with protected sites and the new Natural England framework for categorising and managing pressures, mechanism and actions
• Experience with working with climate change datasets (e.g. UKCP18) to develop adaptation plans for biodiversity under future climate scenarios/
• Authoring company standards and guidance within an Environmental Management System
• Project/ programme management skills
• Developing business cases

Location:

The role will be home-based with an expectation to attend main regional hubs either at Milton Keynes, Birmingham or Little Venice (Paddington) for collaborative working. This is a national role, requiring collaboration with teams in all six of the Trust’s regions. There will be an expectation that the successful candidate will be able travel to attend meetings or fieldwork throughout the regional waterway network.