Field Manager (Landscape Recovery)

Job summary

The Forestry Commission are the government’s forestry experts and we work to protect, improve, expand and connect England’s woods and forests. We do this by providing policy advice to government and leading delivery through regulation, incentives and protecting tree health. The Environment Act set a target of increasing tree cover in England to at least 16.5% by 2050 and recognition of the benefits that trees and woodlands provide for the environment, society and the economy is increasing. We await the revision of the England Trees Action Plan.

The Field Manager role, as part of Forest Services, is responsible for leading a team of Woodland Officers based in their area and for ensuring the effective coordination of our incentives and regulatory activities. Field Managers play a critical role in delivering a step change in our woodland creation levels, and in supporting the woodland management activity across the area. This includes working closely with Natural England, Environment Agency, Rural Payments Agency, Forestry England and Forestry Commission Admin Hubs.

This Field Manager role will also lead on some and help coordinate Landscape Recovery activities across the North West and West Midlands area. You will also work closely with the Areas other Field Managers and local area specialists such as ecologists, deer officers, historical advisors and Land Use Advisors.

Field Managers lead and support teams of Woodland Officers effectively to expand, protect, improve and connect woodlands across the area and ensure the effective use of Forestry Commission incentives and regulations. This Field Manager will support Landscape Recovery across the North West and West Midland.

Job description

Responsibilities

• Team working and Managing People – Provide leadership and support to the Woodland Officers, Landscape Recovery Woodland Officers, Regulations & Incentives Support Officers and Technical Support Officers to ensure the effective delivery of our incentives and regulatory programmes.
  This includes working alongside Area Operations Managers, attending regular meetings, providing feedback on workloads, prioritizing a range of workstream approvals and sharing topical updates with your team including leading local area meetings.
• Delivery of Government aspirations for trees and woodlands - play a key role in supporting the operational delivery Forest Services Business Plan. This includes work to help promote the opportunities of the Forest Service’s Strategic Framework and working with delivery partners.
• Manage Incentives and Regulations – Oversee the delivery of incentives across the area through supporting their area team and partners by building positive working relationships to ensure the effective promotion and delivery of our incentives programme. Including seeking support from technical specialists to process complex cases and influencing the evolution of new initiatives to best deliver government forestry policy. Support with the areas incentives and regulation workload.
• Engaging with stakeholders and partnership working - Work with the Area Management Team to identify the partnerships to engage in order to deliver appropriate sector support in identified priority areas. Developing and maintaining good working relationships with advisers and stakeholders.

Landscape Recovery specific responsibilities

This role will help ensure a consistent standard of delivery across the nine NW & WM Landscape Recovery (LR) projects and is funded through the Farming Programme (FP). As appropriate the post holder will support and provide guidance to within the Area team and to each LR project team and the farmers and landowners within each LR project.

Work with the Landscape Recovery (LR) project to adopt a one team working approach with colleagues across the Defra group (Defra, Natural England, Environment Agency, Historic England) to improve both grant design and delivery, ultimately delivering better environmental outcomes.

Build and maintain relationships between Forestry Commission’s Landscape Recovery team and FC subject matter experts from other grants, regulations, policy and operational teams.

Identify and enable the linkages between scheme design and operational delivery from central government to FC’s national office and area based operational teams.
Analyse and manipulate project data, helping to inform Landscape Recovery’s role in reaching Government environmental targets.

Semi-regular presentations to a diverse range of internal/external stakeholders.

• Vision and Culture – Support the overall work of the team to ensure the effective delivery of our vision and culture ambition and to help lead on the development of a proactive Health & Safety culture. Play an active role in the wider work of the team including supporting Management and Area Team Meetings.

Person specification

Experience

Essential:

• Experience or relevant working knowledge of forestry Incentives and Regulations for land based schemes, such as Countryside Stewardship;
• Significant knowledge of forestry and silviculture, including having a clear understanding of the UK Forestry Standard;
• Confident interpersonal and communication skills with experience of presenting to a range of audiences, both verbally and written;
• Experience of stakeholder management - building strong business relationships and collaborative working to deliver mutually beneficial results;
• Demonstrate the ability to lead a team in delivering results within agreed timescales and quality standards.
• Demonstrate a proven ability to manage a team to deliver results and turnaround times to an agreed standard, and balance a range of work priorities.
• Proactively deal with complex and contentious issues relating to people and delivery of project outcomes.

Desirable:

• Experience of managing people and demonstrable ability to manage a widely distributed team to deliver results to an agreed standard;
  
• Practical woodland management experience of both deciduous and coniferous woodland;
  
• Experience of delivering forestry incentives and regulations.

Professional and Technical Expertise

Essential:

• Degree or Higher Diploma in Forestry, Land Management, Countryside Management, Environmental Management, or a related discipline. or significant related experience in land management / tree and forestry issues. Together with related experience in partnership working centred on land management / tree and forestry issues.
  
• Competent and effective IT user with experience of MS Office and also including remote working and associated communication tools (e.g. MS Teams).
  

Please clearly demonstrate how the above applies to you throughout your application. Failure to do so will mean that your application is automatically sifted out

Desirable:

• Membership of a relevant professional institute (e.g. Institute of Chartered Foresters);
  
• Evidence of having undertaken appropriate management development training and supporting continuous professional development.

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Making Effective Decisions
• Communicating and Influencing
• Working Together
• Developing Self and Others
• Managing a Quality Service

We only ask for evidence of these behaviours on your application form:

• Communicating and Influencing

Technical skills

We'll assess you against these technica