Deputy Director, Planning Development Plans

Bristol, Darlington, Leeds, London, Manchester, Wolverhampton

The Leasehold, Land and Planning Systems Directorate sits within the Regeneration, Housing & Planning Group. The Directorate leads on leasehold reform and legislation; a major digital planning programme; sponsorship of HM Land Registry; and a wide range of vital planning policy and delivery such as local and neighbourhood plans, planning applications, permitted development rights, compulsory purchase, gypsy & traveller policy and sponsorship of the Planning Inspectorate.

The Planning Development Plans division delivers policy and implementation on strategic plan, local plans and neighbourhood plans; Street votes; gypsy and traveller planning policy; and sponsorship of the Planning Inspectorate (PINS), the appellate body for planning applications.

We are dedicated to building a diverse team that represents residents in our communities and an inclusive culture where everyone feels they belong in the organisation, can be themselves at work and can speak up to challenge. We want everyone to be able to contribute to the success of our organisation, regardless of background.

We are recruiting for a Deputy Director, Planning Development Plans. We work in a specialised, fast-paced environment. You will be leading teams of committed planners, policy experts, finance experts, and procurement specialists, operating across a broad set of policies and programmes with considerable ministerial interest. The work broadly divides into four areas.

First, as a member of the Directorate’s Senior Leadership Team you will have significant opportunities and responsibilities for the leadership, motivation, inclusion, and support of everyone across the Planning Development Plans division and our wider programme. This includes our ambitious corporate objectives around diversity and inclusion, recruitment, wellbeing, skills and development, relationships with external stakeholders and analysis.

Second, within the team, you will lead a group of officials who are responsible for getting plans in place across the country. This is no easy job: the team navigates law, policy, propriety matters, economics, and politics to work with local stakeholders to develop spatial plans for growth, jobs, homes, and the environment. Your role is to support and empower them, providing steers on challenging cases, upholding the highest standards of prudence and propriety.

Third, also within your team a group of officials lead on the Department’s flagship Neighbourhood Planning policy. This team undertakes a complex mix of policy work, procurement and contract management, stakeholder engagement and financial management. You will need to have a good understanding of Managing Public Money, an eye for detail and the capacity to make operational decisions at pace.

Fourth, the final part of your team works on reforming development plans to ensure that in the future the plan-making system delivers more plans in more places to meet more of the country’s needs for homes, infrastructure, environmental enhancement, and well-designed places. You will support the team to advise ministers on strategy and practical legislative and implementation opportunities and risks.

Key accountabilities

• As Deputy Director you will be responsible for shaping the future agenda of your team and its policies, providing the challenge and oversight required to ensure a constant focus on successful delivery.
• To succeed in this new context, you will need to build trust and understanding across your whole division, bringing everyone together and moving forward with a shared sense of purpose as we enter a new era of delivery, in a new directorate.
• You will develop advice to help ministers navigate often uncertain and complex policy environments – demonstrating integrity and propriety in all you do –while building the expertise and ability required within the team to deliver on the significant levels of ministerial ambition in all areas of work.
• You will commission and oversee very high-quality written work –from policy briefings to public strategies –and will take the lead on briefing ministers and senior external leaders.
• As Deputy Director you also play an important role in maintaining a healthy culture and support on both people and wellbeing issues within the teams –including via the development of team-specific people plans, providing senior assistance in recruitment across the whole of DLUHC and making an active contribution to the corporate leadership of the directorate, group, and department.

The role both demands significant levels of enthusiasm and resilience. This will require a proactive, nuanced approach, balancing competing interests and thinking across the short-, medium-and long-terms.

You will need to be at ease with understanding and deploying evidence and data, both to make the case for interventions or programmes and to convince others that a new way of working could lead to improved outcomes and greater efficiency. You will have the intellectual and personal confidence to work closely with and –when required –to challenge experts and sector leaders, including independent advisers, academics, and local partners. You will be able to understand the technical detail, but to explain the complicated and technical to non-specialists and to identify the core questions and issues at stake.

You will need to understand and respect the policy constraints in play, operating as a collaborator and influencer who is able to thrive on handling a broad range of policy and performance oversight issues. You will work closely with various teams at the very centre of government, ensuring that they are regularly consulted -and that their needs are acted upon sensitively.

You will bring first class strategy and policy development skills to the role, twinned with the ability to navigate central government and beyond, engaging with a wide range of stakeholders.

As one of the Department’s senior leaders, you will also be a visible role model for the Civil Service leadership behaviours. These can be found in the Civil Service Leadership Statement which is available here.    

Essential criteria

• An inspiring, confident and empowering leader, who can set strategic direction, lead effectively through ambiguity and get the best out of a diverse workforce through promoting an inclusive, high-performance culture.
• Good judgement, first class briefing skills (both verbal and written), especially in making the complicated clear and comprehensible, and the personal confidence to operate in a complex, specialised role alongside high-profile partners with a clear sense of their own aims and objectives.
• A record of working effectively with Ministers and/or comparable senior groups externally – and the judgement to handle highly sensitive and political issues confidently.
• Strategic policy thinking capability – able to understand and shape the ways that multiple policy interventions interact, the foresight to map out what the landscape ahead will look like and the ability to lead the team to success.
• A track record of successful delivery at pace and managing risks effectively across a large policy portfolio -especially when in a changing policy and/or political environments.
• Adept at building and maintaining very strong working relationships with other senior officials across Whitehall and with senior figures in local government.
• Expertise and experience in planning policy

Alongside your salary of £75,000, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities contributes
£19,710 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme.

Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

• Learning and development tailored to your role
• An environment with flexible working options
• A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
• A Civil Service pension

This role has a minimum assignment duration of 3 years. An assignment duration
is the period of time a Senior Civil Servant is expected to remain in the same post to enable them
to deliver on the agreed key business outcomes. The assignment duration also supports your career through
building your depth of expertise.

As part of accepting this role you will be agreeing to the expected assignment duration set out above.
This will not result in a contractual change to your terms and conditions.
Please note this is an expectation only, it is not something which is written into your terms and
conditions or indeed which the employing organisation or you are bound by. It will depend on your
personal circumstances at a particular time and business needs, for example, would not preclude any
absence like family friendly leave. It is nonetheless an important expectation, which is why we ask you
to confirm you agree to the assignment duration set out above.

This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) initiative.

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Job contact :

• Name : SCS Recruitment Team
• Email : scs.recruitment@levellingup.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : scs.recruitment@levellingup.gov.uk