About the job

Summary

The Planning Directorate is at the heart of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and is responsible for advising ministers on how to use planning policy, law and other approaches to achieve the government’s objective of sustainable development – and in particular to help balance the economic, environmental and societal interests in development. Its sit within the wider group that leads on housing and planning in DLUHC.

The Planning Directorate includes 180 staff based across the country and is led collaboratively by Simon Gallagher as the Director of Planning, Joanna Averley as Government’s Chief Planner, and Paul Morrison as Director of Planning Transformation. It consists of ten teams – the Planning Casework Unit (PCU), five policy teams (that lead on issues as diverse as local plans, local planning authority performance, design quality, development management, infrastructure planning and environment planning), three transformation teams who are coordinating planning reform, and our team helping support response as the UK exits the EU. The unit will scale up to meet the needs of the planning reform set out the Planning White Paper Planning for the Future. Our work sets the national policy and legal framework for planning in England.

This role reports into the Director of Planning Transformation, Paul Morrison.

Job description

The Government’s planning reform programme will take a radical, digital-first approach to modernise the planning process.

Planning reform is a critical element of the Government's programme. It involves modernising and improving planning system, which will lay the foundations for more and better homes, greener and more beautiful places, modern infrastructure and long-term sustainability. We will update the system so that communities come first, and local leaders are empowered to shape their areas. Smaller builders will have greater opportunities to build successful businesses in a more competitive market and bigger builders will pay a fair share to ensure we build the right infrastructure and affordable housing that communities require. Our reforms will ensure that developers deliver on their promises and that land with permission is more swiftly turned into homes.

Each community will have the opportunity to set out how they want their place to evolve over the coming years – where they want to see some real change (such as regenerating derelict sites) and where they only want to see more limited change. Communities will decide what they want their areas to look like, in a way that reflects local preferences, and what sort of services and infrastructure they need alongside development.

This programme is part of the Government's Major Project Portfolio and is a key Prime Ministerial priority. This role will play the critical role of programme director.

Responsibilities

Leading and managing a project team of around 30 on a day to day basis.

Designing and establishing the temporary team to deliver the reform programme.

Creating and leading the project to deliver the agreed outcomes within time, cost and quality constraints.

Developing the business case and supporting the SRO in delivering the business case objectives.

Developing the programme budget and delivery within budget.

Identifying skill requirements for all stages of the project. Recruiting resources within budget constraints and effectively deploying them. Building the project team; delegating roles and responsibilities, developing capability and fostering innovation.

Translating agreed business case benefits into project outcomes and managing delivery of those outcomes.

Forming collaborative relationships with key actors across the planning system, both internally and externally. Creating alliances for change based on a spirit of common endeavour and co-production across sectors.

Leading user insight functions and ensure the user’s voice is at the heart of the programmes development and implementation to ensure success.

Leading change management function, working with users across the sector to effectively implement and embed reform in the system to achieve lasting benefits.

Managing and escalating programme risks.

Developing and agreeing the vision and measurable success criteria with the senior responsible owner.

Monitoring and controlling project progress and performance.

Ensuring appropriate standards, good practice and lessons learned are sought and applied.

The Person

You will need the following skills for this role:

Agile and Lean practices. You know about and can lead on a range of Agile and Lean tools and techniques, with an ability to coach within and outside of your team.

Commercial management. You can act as the escalation point and resolve large or high-risk commercial management issues. You know how to coach others in appropriate commercial management.

Communication skills. You can manage senior stakeholder expectations and facilitate discussions about high risk and complexity even within constrained timescales. You can speak and represent the community to large audiences inside and outside of government.

Community collaboration. You can contribute to the work of planning community crossing organisational boundaries engaging multiple disciplines e.g. with local government, the rest of DLUHC, other Government Departments.

Financial management. You know how to influence or create budgets that are complex (this could be across an organisation, programme or product view). You can manage the budget you are given and make it work.

Systems thinking. You can take a whole of system view, understanding the relationships between actors in a system and the range of analytical and soft skills to achieve effective system outcomes.

Maintaining delivery momentum. You know how to solve issues and identify innovative ways to unblock problems.

Making the process work. You focus on the outcome. You can challenge and improve disproportionate organisational processes where it impacts the pace of the team.

Planning. You know how to lead a continual planning process in a very complex environment including forecasting, estimating, managing uncertainty, metrics and measurements.

Essential Criteria

Experience of leading and delivering system wide change, using transformation and systems change techniques to deliver large scale reform.

Experience of using user insight to shape and develop the programme, ensuring its deliverables meet the needs of end users and will create real change on the ground.

Experience of working on GMPP programmes, working closely with IPA and N10 to ensure large and nationally significant programmes are delivered successfully.

The ability to build networks of change across organisational and sectoral boundaries.

Inspiring, confident and empowering leader who can get the best out of a workforce with diverse backgrounds and experience, communicate with vision and work effectively as part of a management team.

The ability to demonstrate strong and effective stakeholder management including advising on complex issues and influencing others whilst demonstrating political awareness.

Desirable Criteria

Experience of the planning system.

Experience of working with local Government on digitalisation of services.

Experience of working in a political environment.