Environment Specialist (Water Quality)

Are you looking for an opportunity to help protect and enhance our water environment?

Do you enjoy working with environmental information and data and have experience in water quality and catchment planning?

As an Environment Specialist, you’ll be part of a team that uses data and evidence to help inform and influence integrated working and investment in environmental improvement projects. You’ll work with others to ensure that our data is accurate and reliable. You’ll contribute your knowledge to plans and reports, providing advice to other teams, working groups, senior managers and external partners.

Our team focuses on water quality, catchment planning and the commissioning of our Area’s water monitoring programme, so there’s a variety of work to get involved with and specialise in. We work with numerous teams within the Environment Agency, plus external organisations e.g. Natural England and water companies, so you’ll build productive and influential relationships with a variety of customers and partners.

You will focus on the following areas of work, so knowledge or experience of some of these is essential:

• The Water Environment (Water Framework Directive) (England and Wales) Regulations 2017
• Water company price review
• Wastewater discharge permitting and modelling
• Drainage and Wastewater Management Plans
• Nutrient neutrality
• Water quality monitoring planning

We support membership of an appropriate professional institute, e.g. CIWEM, and encourage ongoing learning and development.

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 respond to incidents or provide support during an incident. 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

The Integrated Environment Planning Team is a water planning team working on:

• River Basin Planning
• Commissioning Area monitoring activities
• Water Quality
• Water Company investment programmes
• Drought management

Using data and evidence we plan, prioritise, and influence delivery of environmental outcomes. We work with internal teams, external partners, and organisations to focus on the right activities to drive major investment from others and contribute to our local and Defra’s 25-Year-Plan aims.

Experience/skills required 

You will have a good understanding of our business, environmental activities, strong IT skills and demonstrate specialist technical leadership ability.

Qualified to degree level/higher in a relevant environmental discipline and/or have relevant work experience.

Ideally, you will be:

• Familiar with the Water Environment (Water Framework Directive) (England and Wales)
  Regulations 2017, how they help address environmental challenges in area and link with other
  legislation
• Experienced in gathering, maintaining and quality-assuring data and using a variety of
  techniques to present data/information in a convincing and engaging way
• An excellent communicator, experienced at making sense of technical information and
  presenting it clearly and logically
• Well-organised and able to plan, track, deliver and evaluate own work
• Effective at influencing and persuading others to work collaboratively when developing and
  delivering environmental outcomes
• Diplomatic, sensitive and demonstrate political awareness when dealing with customers,
  stakeholders, and communities

Contact and additional information

The role will be based at
Orchard House, Addington, Kent. We currently have a hybrid working arrangement with a mix of
home and office working.

Interviews will take place end of July 2023.

We are fully committed to having an inclusive workforce to reflect the communities we serve. We welcome flexible working patterns for all our vacancies, including job share, so please clearly include any information regarding your preferred working arrangements on your application.

For further details or an informal chat about the role please contact Priya Sharma: [email protected] or Robert Callahan: [email protected]