Environment Officer - 8949

We are the Environment Agency. We protect and improve the environment. Our work helps to ensure people can enjoy the water environment through angling and navigation. We look after land quality, promote sustainable land management and help protect and enhance wildlife habitats. We also work closely with businesses to help them comply with environmental regulations.

Joining one of our customer facing frontline teams, you’ll help create a cleaner, safer and healthier environment. You’ll tackle everything from legal and illegal sites on rivers, waterways and farms across a range of urban and rural sites, all of which may impact the local environment.

You’ll be responsible for regulating a range of activities to ensure they are carried out without polluting the environment or causing harm to people. Sometimes we have to take tough action to achieve these aims and occasionally you will need to investigate environmental offences. You may also be required on occasion to give evidence in a court of law.

The job is extremely varied, vital and at times challenging. Sometimes you’ll need to work with business customers to help them operate legally; while at other times you will be enforcing the law and making sure operators improve their performance.

The Land and Water teams are based in both the Newcastle and Darlington offices, covering the catchment areas for the main rivers Wear, Tees & Tyne. These busy teams regulate both Agriculture and Water discharges in a mixture of urban and rural areas, but will spend a proportion of their time dealing with reactive issues such as incidents.

You’ll ideally have some exposure to a regulatory, enforcement or customer-focused role. Perhaps you've inspected or evaluated sites, handled or investigated complaints or been in a role where you’ve had to have difficult conversations with people. Whatever your background, you'll be interested in the environmental sector and be willing to enforce environmental regulations, even if this means sometimes dealing with confrontational situations.

Whilst relevant work experience would be an advantage, it’s much less important to us than your ability to demonstrate the key skills we’re looking for:

• organise and able to prioritise your workload
• handle confrontational people
• confident and assertive
• adapt your communication style to suit others
• integrate into a team
• IT/computer literate
• record information correctly
• enjoy working both outdoors and in an office environment
• be passionate about the environment and willing to learn about environmental regulation and enforcement

Closing Date: 13th October 2018
As well as a competitive starting salary we offer:
• structured development programme with incremental salary increases
• a generous pension scheme
• holiday allowance related to length of service, rising from 25 days to 30 days per year, plus bank holidays
• a range of flexible working options including flexitime - our aim is to help you achieve a positive work-life balance
• Lease car, generous career-average defined-benefits pension scheme (18.5% employer contributions), flexitime and flexible working arrangements
• A starting salary of £20,234 per annum, increasing to £21,336 then £21,908 as you progress through the training and development programme. Progression to £27,138 with additional development.

For more information please contact Alison Martin on 02030 255283 or email alison.martin@environment-agency.gov.uk

Works co-operatively as part of a team to achieve common goals.

Finds and delivers optimal solutions by effectively analysing all the information, probing to develop alternatives and taking sound and timely decisions

Presenting a case in a convincing and attractive way that will win people over, encouraging them to follow plans willingly; often succeeding where logic and reason alone would fail.

Full driving licence