Senior Planning Specialist

Salary: £38,450 pa, 4-day week + company benefits
Duration: Full time (32hrs, 4-day week)
Location: Flexible within the UK, home-based.
Closing date for applications: 9:00am on Wednesday 4th March 2026. Please note that we may close applications early if we receive a high volume, so early applications are encouraged.

Interviews will be held virtually over Teams, the week commencing 16th of March 2026.

The Role

This role offers a unique opportunity to contribute to a successful strategic species conservation strategy by supporting colleagues with essential knowledge and guidance on the UK planning system.

The role requires an experienced, well-organised, confident communicator who can provide a high level of daily operational planning support to colleagues, alongside working on tasks and projects that require planning policy input that brings together licensing requirements and integrates our work effectively and smoothly with the planning system.

The experienced postholder will be responsible for supporting the NatureSpace team with the increasing needs of a rapidly growing company – the technical and operations teams handle a varied workload and require significant planning support. This can vary from providing knowledge and understanding of the planning application and decision-making process, planning law and policy guidance, and planning support within internal and external meetings, and to external stakeholders. The role would also support all other teams when required, including the science and programme teams, to provide planning law, strategic planning and local planning policy knowledge and context for innovative new workstreams and to support licence applications.

The role sits within the Business Support team – a small yet growing team with a wide remit – and will be line-managed by the Business Support Manager. You’ll work closely with two current planning specialists, while also working independently and collaboratively with colleagues across the company.

A sound understanding of planning law and practice is required for this role, with an expectation of a good grasp of planning principles. It is expected that the postholder will guide and support the two existing planning specialists within the team, supporting their development in core competencies to consolidate skills and build confidence and expertise within the planning team, and will ultimately undertake line-management responsibilities.

We’re looking for an enthusiastic, capable individual, passionate about planning with a keen interest in biodiversity and sustainable development.

Key Responsibilities:

• Co-ordinate the planning team to provide planning support across all teams as necessary, on both development management and strategic planning areas of expertise.
• Lead on the preparation, review and delivery of internal planning training, including organising training sessions and designing presentations.
• Review all external communications to ensure they are accurate in planning knowledge and understanding.
• Supervise and review planning knowledge and data for all licence applications requiring planning policy input, ensuring accuracy.
• Ensure that important records are kept up-to-date and assist with the quality assurance process to maintain high-quality data.
• Co-ordinate the review and dissemination of planning news, updates and guidance to the wider team and other relevant key information.
• Be responsible for a variety of work as necessary, including administration, communications, updating and monitoring progress towards key planning projects and wider company projects as required.

Essential Skills, Knowledge, and Experience:

• Qualified to at least degree standard in a relevant discipline (such as Town and Country Planning/Environmental Planning). Demonstratable equivalent working knowledge and experience would be considered for a suitable candidate.
• Excellent time management and organisational skills and the ability to respond to changing and challenging priorities within set timescales.
• Good level of understanding of the role that local planning authorities play in making decisions about new developments in England.
• Excellent knowledge of the English planning system, at local, regional and national scale – including the planning application & determination process, appeals process, and planning policy. A good understanding of planning law is required to enable support to the wider team on all planning matters.
• Good IT skills and competence in using Microsoft 365 package, including Word, Excel, Teams, Outlook and PowerPoint.
• An effective communicator with good inter-personal skills, able to liaise proactively and confidently with a range of people, both in written and verbal formats.
• A positive, enthusiastic and self-motivated individual that can work independently.
• Ability to cope with remote working with limited opportunities for in-person meetings and events throughout the year (e.g. company days).

Desirable Skills, Knowledge, and Experience:

• Experience of supporting team members within the planning or environment sector
• Line management experience
• An understanding of environmental assessment, biodiversity conservation, BNG, protected species and licensing
• Enthusiasm for wildlife conservation in the UK. Conservation is at the heart of what we do.

Company Background

Great crested newts have declined dramatically in the UK over the last 50 years and although still widespread across lowland England they are no longer common. Despite protection under UK and European wildlife law, numbers are still declining, and habitat loss is their biggest threat.

In 2018, the NatureSpace District Licensing Scheme was launched – set up in partnership with the UK’s leading freshwater and amphibian non-governmental organisations as well as seven local planning authorities across the South Midlands. Since then, the scheme has expanded nationally and now covers 70 local planning authorities across Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, East Sussex, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, Staffordshire, Surrey and West Sussex.

The scheme allows planning authorities to authorise (under strictly defined terms) activities which affect great crested newts at the same time as they grant planning permission. The District Licensing Scheme has significant advantages for newt conservation and wider biodiversity benefits through a fully funded region-wide conservation strategy that creates high-quality habitat at a landscape scale and delivers long-term management and monitoring for newts, which is carried out via our partners at the Newt Conservation Partnership (a community benefit society formed of experts from Freshwater Habitats Trust and Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust). The scheme benefits developers because the licensing process for great crested newts is simplified and streamlined.

We also work with national infrastructure providers, such as Network Rail and National Highways, to help them secure and deliver 'Organisational Licences' for protected species with the same conservation deliverables. The schemes are administered by NatureSpace, are regulated, and approved by Natural England and are supported by the country’s leading amphibian and freshwater NGOs.

2026 is an exciting year for us, as we advance new schemes that build upon our successes; this will include officially launching our uniquely stacked high-integrity BNG offer and piloting our Priority Species Scheme, as well as developing new licensing schemes for other protected species.

Company Culture, Employment Benefits and Location

NatureSpace Partnership is a small (c.68 staff) but busy and rapidly growing company. Being a small organisation, everyone has a big say in what we do and how we do it. Our agility and size mean that your voice will be heard and you will have the opportunity to directly see the results of your work.

Work/life balance is important to us. We actively support a flexible working arrangement so that our work fits in with our lives and we are open to exploring how this role could best work for you.

The successful candidate will be joining a friendly, close-working team of home-workers and will have responsibility for managing their workload and working independently as part of a dispersed national team. The post requires high levels of motivation and high standards of self-management. Location is entirely flexible within the UK - this post will be mainly desk-based but some travelling to meetings in England will be required.

NatureSpace embraces equal opportunities, diversity and inclusion and we welcome applications from all suitable qualified and experienced individuals. To build a team of the most talented employees, NatureSpace is committed to being a flexible employer and we place considerable emphasis on wellbeing and job satisfaction.

We offer a significant benefits package for all staff including flexible working, a 4-day working week plus occasional mandatory Friday meetings, time off-in-lieu (TOIL) or overtime pay (in agreement with your line manager), 20 annual leave days (which equates to 5-weeks off per year in light of the 4-day working week, plus bank holidays, weekday birthdays and additional holiday over the Christmas period), an annual performance bonus of up to 20% of your pay, company pension contributions, company private health and life insurance, plus the option to join our electric vehicle salary sacrifice scheme.

Applicants must have the legal right to live and work in the UK.