About Us:

We’re transforming our borough for now and future generations. Join us at the forefront of change.

Kensington and Chelsea is a borough of extreme contrasts. We’re not just a place for the wealthy, we also have some of the most deprived wards in London. There are many challenges facing us in ensuring all our communities can flourish.

Our most urgent priority is meeting the challenging housing target we’ve set. To help us do this we’re leading on the use of digital engagement to reach a much wider audience, ensuring our communities are involved in everything we do. We’re levelling the playing field for all our residents and giving them a voice in our new, stronger growth agenda.

And we haven’t just changed our focus. We’ve changed our culture. At the heart of this is the new growth and delivery team we’ve built. We’re working in a dynamic new way. It’s no longer just about reactive, regulatory work. It’s about proactive early planning.

Bring plenty of initiative, an open mind and a positive, flexible approach and help drive the success of our challenging, future-shaping journey.

About the Department 

As a high-performing planning department we deal with a wide range of applications, making us one of the busiest planning authorities in the country. We’re a dynamic forward-thinking team with a can-do approach and are always striving to improve our service. We’re also proud of our learning and development commitment and take pride in growing our own to create a strong and resilient spatial planning team. 

The Role:

A challenging but exciting role to build, maintain and develop trust between the borough’s communities and the Council’s Planning Department you will be a principal point of contact for local organisations and community groups, acting as a conduit between them and the Council for major development sites.

 
You will broaden the reach of the department through innovative techniques and digital technology, making the planning system more accessible to those who don’t normally engage, especially disenfranchised communities and drive forward the department’s commitments to embrace digital technology and social media for policy preparation and discussing major applications.

Working across the planning department to give support to Planning Officers on community engagement activities, you will also give support to the Spatial Policy Team in delivering the new Local Plan and the Growth and Delivery team for bringing forward new development sites.

For more information on the role, please see the Job Description

About You:

Putting communities first and working together with respect and integrity are our values, and we want people who share these to come and work with us. With an appropriate degree level qualification and proven track record of delivering successful community engagement activities and projects, you will have experience of working in partnership with a number of different organisations or groups.

An understanding of local government, the communities it serves and the services it provides will assist together with excellent skills in planning and delivering projects. The role requires good communication skills, including written and oral communication and a good understanding of equality and diversity and how this can have an impact on the delivery of services.

In return, you can look forward to a package that includes a competitive salary, a high-quality pension scheme and generous annual leave plus bank holidays.

We work in partnership with Hampshire County Council (HCC) who deliver many transactional services on our behalf. Although most communications will be from HCC, all selection and appointment decisions will be made by RBKC. Certain services are shared across more than one Council area to nearby neighbouring Authorities. This enhances delivery and reduces costs. Your recruitment information will advise if your remit extends beyond RBKC.

We will primarily contact candidates by e-mail throughout the recruitment process, please monitor your email junk / spam folder as our system generated emails may be allocated to these folders by your email settings.

We engage our staff with a variety of learning types including face-to-face and virtual learning because we want to ensure our staff understand our values and behaviours, grow their skills and develop their careers.

Additional information

RBKC is currently inclusively reviewing its pay, reward and benefits framework.

This post is covered by the Fluency Duty, as outlined in the Code of Practice on the English language requirements for public sector workers.

We are committed to promoting equality and respecting diversity and welcome applications from all sections of the community.

We are a Disability Confident Employer – committed to ensuring that our recruitment and selection process is inclusive and accessible.