Public Affairs Manager

Duration: Full time, permanent. 

Start date: ASAP.

Location:  Flexible. This role will be required to travel to our London HQ at least once a month for team days and ad hoc for other related parliamentary meetings and events, but can work flexibly as per Bite Back 2030’s hybrid working policy. 

Salary: £35k p/a, dependent on experience. 

Reporting to: Director of Policy and Engagement

About Bite Back 2030 

Be part of the creative, agile and growing team behind Bite Back 2030’s exceptional teenage activists. Join us as our new Public Affairs Manager and contribute to a 10-year journey to help make the food system healthier and fairer for everyone.

Young people today are up against a flood of unhealthy food, pouring out of our high streets, supermarkets and school canteens. As a result processed foods, snacks, soft drinks and takeaways are playing too big a role in their lives. Junk food is heavily marketed, cheap and easy to access at a time when one in three children are at risk of poor health due to the food they eat, with children from the most deprived areas disproportionately affected. 

We believe young people are the key voice in driving this change in our food system, and are growing a movement of young people to raise their voice and drive impact. In the past two years, our National Youth Board — including incredible campaigners like Christina and Dev — have secured government commitments to extend free school meals during the holidays, restrict junk food marketing, and to improve the quality of school food. 

We now have 3,000 young people involved in our movement through our National and Regional Youth Boards, School Food Champions and Community Food Champions Programmes - all campaigning for changes to improve child health at a national and local level.  It’s a really exciting time to join the organisation.

About the Role

We are seeking a Public Affairs Manager, to lead our national public affairs activity, influencing the government to help deliver evidence-based policies that will make a real difference to children’s health. This is an exciting opportunity to work on the forefront of an urgent and politically salient policy area while also collaborating with young people to ensure their voices and lived experiences are heard by policymakers. 

The Public Affairs Manager will report to our Director of Policy and Engagement and be responsible for developing and implementing all our public affairs activity, ensuring alignment with our campaigns team and working closely with our partners in other organisations to bring about meaningful change. This is a great opportunity for someone to join a small, but growing organisation and have the chance to lead high profile public affairs activity.

Responsibilities:

The Public Affairs Manager will develop and deliver influential and engaging public affairs activity that centres young people’s voices and experiences and drives impact.  Key responsibilities include:

• Develop and deliver a public affairs and influencing strategy to galvanise action, building the profile of Bite Back 2030, our young campaigners and secure support from political stakeholders at all levels.

• Plan a pipeline of tactical public affairs activities that take advantage of key opportunities and mechanisms to build relationships with a growing number of political advocates.

• Translate young people’s insights and policy context into campaign messaging for policymakers and distil policy detail into key points for young people to engage with and campaign on.

• Provide strategic advice to the team on political developments and adapt strategies and plans accordingly. 

• Work with our youth team to engage and support our youth leaders to speak with policymakers including development of briefing materials, preparing and running training sessions and attending meetings.

• Arrange events, draft letters, submissions, briefing notes, reports and other campaign materials to engage policymakers, Government and manage dissemination and follow up.

• Conduct political stakeholder mapping, perception auditing and contact tracking to inform strategic political engagement plans and evaluation.

• Work closely with other organisations via established coalitions and more informal coordination around key issues, working collaboratively at the highest levels with values-aligned organisations to achieve our goals

The ideal candidate would have the following experience and qualities:

• At least two years experience working in public affairs in an agency,  in-house or in Parliament.

• Good knowledge of the UK political landscape including the working of Westminster, Whitehall and existing relationships with MPs and advisors.

• The ability to work collaboratively in a fast-paced environment and respond flexibly to adapt strategies to fit quickly rapidly changing political landscapes. 

• Strong writing and communication skills, with the ability to adapt messages and language to resonate with different audiences.

• Organised, action-oriented and results-driven.

• Passion for young people’s health, nutrition and social justice.

• Clear and persuasive communicator.

• Brings a positive, can-do attitude to the team and applies it to identify new opportunities to advance our organisational purpose.

This is a full-time role.  We can be flexible on location depending on the availability and preference of the chosen candidate.

Please apply by the 7th of November 2022.

First interviews will take place on 18th November 2022.