Team Leader – Waste Infrastructure Delivery Programme

As Team Leader of the Waste Infrastructure Delivery Programme (WIDP) you will lead a significant portfolio of support to local authorities in relation to their Waste Infrastructure projects. These 22 projects are delivering new facilities to ensure less waste goes into landfill. Defra supports the projects with £90m of grant funding per annum (totalling some £3bn of grant funding over the lifetime of the programme which ends in 2042). You will have responsibility for overseeing the portfolio; ensuring value for money for government and delivery of expected project outcomes.

But this is more than simply a grant management programme. With our waste PFI projects spanning all aspects of the local authority waste services (from collections at kerbside, through to disposal via energy from waste facilities for example, and all steps in between) the team is ideally situated to provide input, advice and delivery support to local authorities and government stakeholders on all aspects of the various waste and environmental policy initiatives currently underway, not least the waste reforms set out in the Resources and Waste Strategy 2018.

You will directly lead a small team of four within core Defra and provide strategic leadership to our chosen delivery partner – Local Partnerships. Local Partnerships supports WIDP, the wider Waste Teams and other Government Departments with technical, commercial and financial expertise, and provides embedded support to local authorities relating to their waste management activities.

• You will lead the supervision of the portfolio of local authority waste projects, ensuring they are compliant with the grant terms and conditions and provide value for money of outcomes. Where deficiencies are identified you will propose appropriate action to rectify the defects. This will involve managing financial and legal risks associated with such proposals
• You will be the WIDP lead with the Infrastructure Projects Authority on the latter’s programme of work relating to local authority preparations for their PFI contracts to end and provision of follow on services
• You will be the strategic lead and relationship manager with the senior leadership team at Local Partnerships - our key delivery partner and source of technical, commercial, financial and legal advice as it relates to the local authority waste sector
• You will play a key role in integrating the work of WIDP into the delivery of the reforms under the Resource and Waste Strategy 2018 and other cross Government priorities such as decarbonisation of the local authority waste sector
• You will be responsible for the programme’s c£90m per annum waste PFI grant budget as well as the c£1.5m per annum budget for the provision of support from Local Partnerships
• You will be required to prepare submission, briefings and other materials for senior officials and Ministers on matters relating to the Programme
• You will lead a team with two HEOs and one EO within a branch with a flexible approach to responsibilities