Principal Planner – Development Management

Role - Principal Planner – Development Management

Location - Breckland (East Anglia)

Salary - Negotiable

Contract Type - Permanent

Annual Leave - Min. 23 days

Travel - The Post holder is primarily required to travel throughout the Breckland District but with the potential to travel outside the district according to the needs of the business

Hours - 37.5 hours per week, however there is a requirement to work flexibly to acheive the service requirements  of the business

A career defining opportunity for an ambitious planning professional looking to build their reputation and portfolio of planning experience in a successful, rapidly growing consultancy based in East Anglia.

1. About the role

In 2009 Capita was appointed as partner to Breckland District Council to provide its Town Planning and Building Control service.  Our team, based in the Council’s offices in Dereham, provide the Council with the full range of planning policy, development management and building control services.  We also provide consultancy services to other councils and to the private sector, with access across the Capita Business to a full range of built environment consultancy support.

As our Principal Planner, you will be part of an ambitious, successful team providing our core client with high quality, timely and outcome based development management services. Your key responsibilities will include:

• To manage a personal caseload of all types of applications including major applications
• Experience in dealing with large scale planning applications
• To deal with all aspects of the Development Management process to include consultations and negotiations with applicants and agents to obtain quality outcomes within the time constraints set out in the business's contractual arrangements
• Providing timely, comprehensive and accurate reports and recommendations on planning applications to meet relevant targets
• Prepare appeals in relation to planning and enforcement matters. Attend and provide expert evidence at Informal Hearings and Public Inquiries as necessary
• Attending and presenting in a clear and concise manner at Planning Committee and public meetings
• Providing professional advice on planning matters to Members of the Council, the public, and others as necessary
• To keep up to date with current legislation and policy changes, including CPD requirements
• To contribute to consultancy projects for the business
• To ensure excellent customer service to our clients by phone, e-mail and face to face
• Comply with Health and Safety rules for the safety of yourself and others

The above list is not meant to be an exhaustive range of tasks and responsibilities and is subject to the changing requirements of the business.

2. About Us

For more than 30 years Capita has been working across the public and private sectors, solving the complex challenges of our clients, increasing productivity, enhancing their use of technology and data, improving customer and public services and adding value to the UK and local economies.

We do this by combining our talent, creativity, software, technology and innovation with sector knowledge and proven skills and expertise underpinned by our scaled operational platforms.

Our 70,000 talented, committed and engaged employees are essential to delivering business critical services and solutions across all our markets.

We work with clients across a range of sectors, including local government, central government, education, transport, health, life and pensions, insurance and other private sector organisations.

3. What you will do

As our Principal Planner you will:              

• Be concise and possess the ability to communicate at all levels, be well organised and efficient, have a positive attitude, be proactive and solve problems to produce well balanced outcomes.
• Provide consistently high professional advice on planning matters to clients, members of the public, Councillors and others as necessary.
• Negotiate with applicants and agents in order to obtain high quality outcomes within given time constraints set out in our contractual arrangements with our core client and a range of external clients.
• Provide concise, accurate, justified and timely reports and recommendations on mainly minor and small major planning applications and pre application discussions applying current legislation and policy changes as appropriate.
• Be involved in service improvements and our business operations to ensure resilience competitive edge, efficiency and effectiveness going forward.
• Support your peers and mentor more junior staff to ensure project and team targets are met and knowledge and expertise is shared whilst assisting to secure new and repeat work in the way you deliver projects.
• Be willing to travel to meet our client requirements.
• Be agile, dynamic and have the capability to work in ever changing environments.

4. Your experience will include:

• At least five years post qualification experience in development management ideally in both a private and public sector environment
• A demonstrable ability to identify and realise commercial trading opportunities
• Experience of, or the clear potential for, team leadership
• An ability to make site visits together with a driving licence
• A degree qualification in Town and Country Planning or equivalent experience
• Membership (or eligible for membership) of the Royal Town Planning Institute and up to date CPD
• A thorough knowledge of current planning legislation, and a vision for land use planning in the Localism era
• Good verbal and written communication skills to include an ability to make concise focused oral presentations to a wide range of audiences
• The ability to consider a wide range of complex issues and balance those issues to make a clear and reasoned judgement
• Good analytical skills to be able to challenge evidence submitted in connection with land use planning matters
• Proficiency in MS Office (Word, Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint etc), and in data analysis software/programmes
• Good time management skills with the ability to prioritise and manage large workloads for yourself and your team, and to work flexibly to meet the commercial and contractual requirements of the business
• The ability to use your own initiative to solve challenges
• The ability to work with a wide range of people and to work as a member of a team
• To be able to work under pressure to produce timely and high quality work.

5. What’s in it for you?

This is an exciting time in our development as we build on our established position as a leading provider of statutory planning services in the UK. Join us now and help shape our offer while continuing to deliver a first rate planning service to our existing clients.  We will motivate you to perform at your peak, recognising your achievements and rewarding them appropriately.  As well as a generous basic salary we also offer you a minimum 23 day’s holiday, discretionary annual bonus, company pension scheme and access to voluntary benefit options including; child care vouchers, share save scheme, life assurance, holiday buy and many more designed to suit your own personal lifestyle.

Our business is an established and respected player in the Local Public Services markets, capable of challenging the ‘status quo’ and delivering outstanding client facing results.   There are strong career opportunities across the Capita group nationwide and overseas, with a strategy of secondment and resource sharing to enable maximum opportunity for individuals.