Health & Safety Senior Adviser

As Health and Safety Senior Adviser within our National Operations Team, you'll work across multiple locations and disciplines within Natural England, developing relationships and help our employees and volunteers to work safely and stay healthy.

You will be experienced at working in an advisory capacity, influencing change and supporting the development and implementation of a positive health, safety and wellbeing culture at both senior management and organisational level. You will be flexible in your approach, be able to work on mixed, sometimes complex, projects, with competing demands, ensuring their outputs are on time and meet quality expectations. You will have practical experience in carrying out a range of evidence and intelligence gathering activities to support effective regulatory decision making. You will be required to travel to attend face to face meetings with the team and customers e.g. visits to our National Nature Reserves (including some overnight stays).

Your responsibilities will be as follows:

To develop, influence, monitor and advise on Natural England’s policies and procedures across the organisation; To research, develop and evaluate risk management guidance and training to improve the management of health, safety and wellbeing across all areas of the organisation;To work on or lead specific projects by defining the technical compliance requirements to be incorporated into internal processes relating to managing risks associated with high risk activities e.g. construction, vibration and noise, wildfires, COSHH in accordance with Health & Safety legislation; To promote and monitor incident reporting, guiding others through investigations where necessary. Interpret evidence to provide holistic and robust evidence-based findings, trend analysis and recommendations for improvements; To compile and present reports to senior managers and others, leading them to apply approaches to help the organisation deliver a stronger H&S culture;To support, design and implement H&S inspections and audits of work bases including National Nature Reserves, preparing reports sharing best practice and outlining areas for improvement; To identify changes to legislation and best practice to develop, guide and inform the H&S policy and standards and wellbeing strategy and H&S delivery plan; To produce and deliver training using various formats and give presentations designed and delivered for specific audiences;To establish partnership working and networking with other organisations such as DEFRA agencies, National Trust, RSPB etc., to share best practice; To support the management of external relationships with key stakeholders such as the Health and Safety Executive, The Visitor Safety Group (VSG) and the Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH).

Technical, specialist knowledge and skills required

NEBOSH certificate in Occupational Safety & Health (essential)Robust and current knowledge of health and safety legislation (essential)Recent experience in an H&S advisory role (essential)An understanding of the way wellbeing and health and safety are intrinsically linked. (essential)A full driving licence (desirable)NEBOSH Diploma in Occupational Safety (desirable)Project management skills (desirable)This is a national role and you can be based at any of our Natural England offices - https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/natural-england/about/access-and-opening

Natural England staff are inclusive, motivated and ambitious to achieve results for our environment, for everyone. We welcome and encourage applications from all communities and we operate a guaranteed interview scheme for disabled applicants who meet the minimum requirements for the role.

Wherever possible Natural England accommodates requests for both full-time and part-time hours and other flexible working patterns to help employees achieve a good work/life balance and maintain their health and wellbeing.

From induction to ongoing learning and development, everyone in Natural England is supported to develop their skills and capabilities. Where appropriate there will be offers of training under our apprenticeship schemes.

How to apply

We will assess you against the competencies below during the selection process. When completing the application form you should present relevant examples using the STAR format.

STAR stands for: • Situation • Task • Action • Result Examples should be given in no more than 250 words for each competency. Please ensure you read the Candidate Information Pack before you begin completing the application form. Please note STAR format is not required for the ‘Technical Skills and Knowledge’ competency.