Environment Officer - 19605

Do you have what it takes to protect and improve our environment in Wessex?

We are looking for motivated and outcome focused Environment Officers to join our Land & Water teams in Wessex.

Being an Environment Officer is one of the most important roles at the Environment Agency. You will join one of our customer facing frontline teams working directly to help create a cleaner, safer and healthier environment. The Land and Water Team deliver our regulatory role in water resources, water quality and agriculture, including working closely with water companies to ensure compliance with permits and influencing them to improve their environmental performance. You will carry out inspections of permitted sites and produce written reports capturing the findings. Outside of the permitted sectors you will apply Regulations to protect the environment and secure compliance.
Environment Officers influence and persuade businesses, individuals, our partners and stakeholders to do more for the environment.

Land and Water teams also respond to, and investigate, a wide range of environmental pollution incidents, and where necessary take appropriate enforcement action. You will have an out of hours incident role in this job.

A full driving licence is essential, access to a vehicle will be provided.

Our Land and Water teams respond to incidents across Wessex, including pollutions. We operate a duty rota 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. We are responsible for ensuring there is high quality water available for all, for drinking or recreation. We do this through regulating and enforcing permits for water related activities, including sewage discharges, agriculture and water abstractors. We work indoors and outdoors all year round.

• An A Level (or equivalent) in a relevant subject, with experience working in industry, the environmental sector or enforcement: or
• A degree in a relevant subject, with related work experience being beneficial.

Through experience to date you will ideally be able to demonstrate the following:

• Competent use of standard IT packages to deliver work.
• Evidence of working independently, managing your own time and to make decisions about priorities and appropriate actions.
• An ability to take responsibility for addressing your own performance and developmental needs.
• Experience of influencing and dealing successfully with difficult people/situations.
• Evidence of good communication and customer relations skills, both verbally and in written form.
• An ability to develop and maintain good relations with customers and adapt behaviour to different people and situations.
• The ability to deal with challenging and sometimes confrontational situations in a professional manner.

The Environment Agency offer an extensive range of employee benefits.

For further information on this role, the employee benefits and the work of the Environment Agency, please download the candidate pack.

If you are interested in this opportunity and would like to know more about the work of Land and Water teams in Wessex Area, please contact either:
Rebecca Pike - 02030259382 – rebecca.pike@environment-agency.gov.uk
Chris Westcott - 02030259289 – chris.westcott@environment-agency.gov.uk

The Environment Officer role is a career grade position. The grade minimum salary for EO A is £23,196. The training and development for a new EO A lasts approximately 2 years. After successful assessment you become an EO B on £28,785.

We would welcome applications from existing Environment Officers looking to change roles and/or locations.

Please provide an example where you have found potential problems and identified effective solutions by analysing all relevant information, seeking to develop alternatives and taking sound and timely decisions.

• What were the problems
• How did you identify the best solution
• What was the result
• Could you have done anything differently

Describe how you have used a range of communication methods to present your views in a convincing way.

• Tell us about the audiences,
• What were the messages,
• How did you communicate the messages,
• What you took into consideration to ensure each message landed well, and
• How you altered your communication style to suit each audience?

Describe a time when you persuaded someone to do something that they didn’t initially want to do. Explain the process you went through and how you sought to understand the other person’s point of view.

• What was the situation?
• What were the challenges you faced?
• How did you influence / change their mind?
• What happened?
• What did you learn and is there anything you would do differently in a similar situation in
the future?

Full driving licence