Flood Resilience Community Engagement Officer - 25225

The Community Engagement Officer is an exciting role which will work to improve the resilience and awareness of communities at risk of flooding. You will work with residents, public groups, businesses and schools to help them plan and prepare to reduce the impacts of flooding. You will help ensure communities have the confidence to take positive action during an emergency and will build the relationships and mutual trust between the community and Category 1 & 2 responders.
You will be required to deliver training and exercises to different audiences, help communities develop flood plans, attract and support local volunteers to manage and enact these plans, help communities network and engage with each other to share best practice while being able to signpost communities to other useful sources of information. Out of office hours working will be required when delivering this work.
An important aspect of the job will be having knowledge of the community engagement work being performed by professional partners so that efficiencies can be made through coordinating messages and sharing resources. You will be required to develop innovative methods to overcome barriers to engagement to achieve the goal of increasing community resilience.
Responding to incidents is a central part of what we do. You will be required to have an incident role and make yourself available to respond to incidents or provide business continuity support during an incident. This may attract an additional payment and full training and alternative working arrangements will be available to support you with your incident role

You will be part of the Flood Resilience Team who manage the way of working to deliver community engagement priorities with schools, communities and people effected by flood risk both now and in a changing climate. The team manages our network of Flood Wardens. You will spend time with our Local Authority partners working closely with their flood risk, emergency planning and Resilience teams.

We’re looking for experienced, enthusiastic and pro-active applicants who have a knowledge of community resilience, flood risk management and incident response. You will have experience of working with communities on the ground and will be a good communicator who can interpret and present information to a variety audience. You’ll be able to describe to us how you have influenced others to take positive action or change a behaviour. You will be adaptable and possess the ability to re-prioritise projects and tasks as the situation demands, and effectively track and report these changes. We’ll be looking for evidence that you are self-motivated and able to work independently to deliver work to a high standard.

Your base location will be Teesdale House Darlington based on working in the geographical location of Cleveland and Tees Valley. However, we will likely be looking to be flexible and be able to blend home working and office attendance subject to work requirements.


For further details please contact Kirsty Hardy on 07799074181 or by email on Kirsty.Hardy@environment-agency.gov.uk

We promote an inclusive culture and welcome all applicants including disabled, LGBT+ or Black Asian and Minority Ethnic. If you don’t manage to secure a role, we’ll place you a reserve list. Where possible, we will try to backfill any new vacancies that arise in the next six months from this list.

Listens and questions to understand and engage. Conveys information and ideas clearly, accurately and persuasively through speech and writing
Please describe an example of when you have used a range of communication skills or techniques to successfully convey complex information to an audience?

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.
Please can you give an example of when and how you have presented a case to win people over and what was the result?

Consults and collaborates combines with Customers and Partners effectively through awareness raising, education and combined projects, ensuring buy-in to initiatives and the beneficial promotion of duties and policies
Please give an example of when and how you have raised awareness of an issue and how did you ensure buy-in?

Sets and delivers high work standards, demonstrates the drive to meet targets. Prioritises and organises tasks and resources to ensure timely achievement of result.

Please describe a time when you have delivered a project or a piece of work to a deadline with competing priorities?

A full driving licence is Required