Regulatory Manager (High Hazard)

Full time, 12-month fixed term contract
Staff Grade: 7 

Are you ready to make a real difference? Join our High Hazard specialist team as a Regulatory Manager.

We are committed to enhancing our regulatory practices and building an effective regulatory framework. To achieve this, we are looking for a Regulatory Manager to lead a new dedicated, values driven regulatory team that will focus on enhancing regulation of COMAH (Control of Major Accident Hazards Regulations 2015) sites across England.

You will be an experienced leader with a strong understanding of major industry, including its assets and environmental impacts, gained through relevant experience in operational or regulatory roles. 

COMAH is an important area of work. Your role will be operational, providing direction to our new team who will face major industries, and ensuring these new roles are embedded into the business to augment our operational regulation. You will start to build our assurance within local operations to evidence the effective delivery of a COMAH regime that reduces environment impact and aims to prevent and minimise the consequence of major accidents. You will oversee the effective delivery and assurance of regulation for a sector with nationally and politically significant sites.

You will have a strong strategic mindset, with the ability to align COMAH Regulation with environmental objectives, anticipate trends, and identify opportunities for intelligence driven regulation to maximise environmental improvement.

You will be leading a new team, so you will need to demonstrate your ability to lead and coach the teams through cultural and business change.

Your role will include maintaining the health, safety, and wellbeing of your team, supporting them to develop themselves and managing ways of working to ensure we can meet the needs of the future. You will need to balance the work within your team to ensure that they are focused on the areas that will deliver the greatest environmental benefit.

This position requires the ability to work effectively across the organisation, in an agile way to deliver outcomes.

What is in it for you?

You’ll benefit from a culture that embraces difference and is inclusive where you’ll feel supported and trusted to do the right thing. We’ll invest in you and allow you to grow and shape your career. What’s more, you’ll have access to our great benefits package including:

• A salary up to £68,820 - £80,575 per annum.
• A generous pension scheme of 19%.
• Overtime opportunities through standby and incident pay.
• 27 days holiday (increasing at 3, 6, and 10 years of service up to a maximum of 30) + 8 bank holidays for full-time employees.
• Two additional days for paid environmental outcomes giving you the opportunity to take part in community activities.
• Training and professional development time.
• Maternity, paternity, and adoption leave scheme.

We have a flexible working policy for all employees, to support a healthy work-life balance within your working day. We will also consider flexibility in working patterns across the working week on a case-by-case basis.

What will you do?

In this role you will manage a regulatory team which is managed by Team Leaders and comprising officers with diverse skills, including Principal Regulatory Officers and Senior Regulatory Officers. You will:

• Lead on the development of the regulatory strategy for COMAH and the overall COMAH Operational Delivery Plan. Including management of risk and assurance and advising the Deputy Director.
• Lead a specialist regulatory team responsible for regulatory compliance of the COMAH regime, ensuring resources are deployed to achieve the greatest environmental outcomes.
• Have an externally facing role, establishing and maintaining relationships. This will require a detailed understanding of Environment Agency partners and COMAH customers such as Local Resilience Forum partners, needed to address situations that threaten serious damage to the environment.
• Provide high level advice, guidance and judgement relating to the regulatory activities of your team.
• Lead your department, to work alongside other virtual teams across the business, ensuring that our regulation is intelligence led, is monitoring risks to the environment and that we implement regulatory strategies to manage these risks.
• Work closely with colleagues across the business to interpret policy and environmental objectives to maximise local operations regulatory delivery.
• Deliver accountability for the assurance of our regulatory activities, protecting EA reputation, and delivering a consistent and proportionate regulatory response.

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 provide leadership to support incident management. This may attract an additional payment and full training, and alternative working arrangements will be available to support you with your incident role.

The team 

You’ll lead a newly formed team reporting to an existing Deputy Director. As part of the leadership team, you’ll provide strategic direction, influencing and shaping thinking across the wider business to deliver agile and effective regulation.

The team will work directly with site operators, while collaborating with national and local colleagues to improve COMAH delivery and assurance. Your team will be responsible for delivering their regulatory plan by delivering robust inspections, audits and investigating incidents.

You’ll have an EA Office base location, as a national role the working location is flexible / hybrid. Your team will be dispersed across the whole of England, so regular travel will be required, including the possibility of overnight stays. We welcome flexible working.

What do I need? 

With a track-record of collaborative working at all levels of an organisation, you’ll bring skills in leading, managing and developing others. You will need:

Essential Criteria

• Strong leadership skills demonstrated by successfully leading dispersed teams to work in collaboration to achieve objectives.
• Sound knowledge of the environmental pressures impacting major industries and the environment.
• Understanding of the COMAH Regulations or previous regulatory or industry experience in this regime.
• Effective communication and influencing skills with the capability to engage colleagues across all levels, with a strong customer focus.
• The ability to provide high-level advice, guidance, and sound judgement on your team’s regulatory activities.
• Analytical thinking so that you can not only review a situation to identify potential issues but also identify value added solutions.
• The ability to manage complex multi-faceted activities; elements of this work are time critical and therefore a flexible work style and ability to work at pace are essential.
• The ability to build respectful, collaborative working relationships, underpinned by emotional intelligence.
• A proactive, positive attitude, with a strong problem-solving approach.
• Proven working knowledge of Health, Safety & Wellbeing.
• Full UK driving licence.

Desirable Criteria

• Degree in a Scientific or Engineering subject.
• A good technical understanding of Environmental Regulation – either regulating or being regulated.
• Membership or working towards membership of a relevant professional body.

Contact & additional information

Don't miss this opportunity to be part of the UK's biggest environmental organisation. Join us, and together, let's tackle the challenges of a changing climate and build a more sustainable future. Apply now and embark on a rewarding and fulfilling career journey with the Environment Agency. 

Artificial Intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance on our careers site for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Please note: Candidates selected for interview will be notified by email at least five days in advance. Please check both your inbox and junk mail folders to ensure you don’t miss our message. A reserve list will be held for 6 months, and you may be offered other roles, including temporary roles, in other locations that may be similarly aligned to this role.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record and counter terrorist check.

Closing date for applications: 10th November 2025
Interview Dates: These will be conducted face to face in either Leeds or Birmingham w/c 1st and 8th December 2025.