Summary

We are the public body that looks after England’s historic environment. We champion historic places, helping people understand, value and care for them.

Historic England have a fantastic opportunity for you to join us as our Development Advice Team Leader in our South West Region.

This is a Full Time, Permanent post based in Bristol with hybrid working.

We offer a wide benefits package including a competitive pension scheme starting at 28.97% employer contributions, a generous 28 days holiday, corporate discounts, free entry into English Heritage sites across the country and development opportunities to ensure you achieve your goals.

To view our full range of benefits please follow the link here.

What you will be doing

As one of two Team Leaders, you will lead the Development Advice Team’s provision of statutory and non-statutory advice to help improve peoples’ lives by sustaining the significance of historic places, buildings and sites while securing their wider value to society. You will ensure both in your own caseload - including the more complex and contentious cases - and that of your team, that Historic England’s advice is soundly based in law, relevant to national, regional and local policy and guidance, and reflects our ethos of constructive conservation. 

You will play a key role in our regional Leadership Team, leading by example and helping to set the strategic direction for the South West Region.

You will develop the capabilities and manage the workloads of staff, ensuring knowledge of and compliance with agreed practices and standards. You will ensure that the team engages where our expertise will add most to public value and that the team also supports other colleagues in the advancement of Historic England’s corporate priorities.

Who we are looking for

• Thorough knowledge of the planning system and, either, ancient monuments or secular and ecclesiastical architectural history, designed landscapes and the morphology of historic places in England and the techniques of their study

• A detailed understanding of relevant Government planning policy, guidance and statutory procedures for the historic environment, including Planning Permission, Listed Building Consent and Scheduled Monument Consent (and the Ecclesiastical Exemption)

• Excellent negotiating, influencing and stakeholder engagement skills

• Demonstrable capability in mentoring and supporting colleagues and performance management

• Ability to deal with pressure and challenge

• Excellent team-working, collaboration and project management skills

Please note your application will be scored and assessed against the above criteria.

We are an equal opportunity employer which values diversity and inclusion. If you have a disability or neurodiversity, we would be happy to discuss reasonable adjustments to the job with you. Having just won the Gold Award from MIND, we also recognise the importance of a healthy work-life balance.

We are an inclusive employer and believe that flexible working options are for everyone. We want to make sure our working arrangements don’t prevent anyone from joining us because of their personal circumstances. We also want to provide you with the best balance in your home and work life that we can.

We are open to considering options including job sharing, part-time working, compressed hours working and different working locations, including hybrid working. Please visit our jobs pages or contact us to find out more.

Why work for Historic England

We are committed to promoting equality of opportunity for everyone. Diversity helps us to perform better and attract more people to support our work. We welcome and encourage job applications from people of all backgrounds.

We particularly encourage applications from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic candidates and candidates with disabilities as they are underrepresented within Historic England at this level.

Historic England want all of our candidates to shine in the recruitment process. Please tell us what we can do to make sure you can show us your very best self. You can contact us by email at recruitmentTeam@Historicengland.org.uk if you have any recruitment queries. 

At Historic England we use a hiring system called Applied. Applied is a behavioural science-backed recruitment platform that reduces bias, improves quality of hire and increases diversity. We do not use CV application for the majority of our hiring processes. You will answer a selection of questions that allow our hiring teams to test your skills and suitability for the role.

To ensure a fair and inclusive recruitment process for everyone the use of AI or automated tools is not permitted.

Provisional interview dates: 6th or 7th August 2025

Please follow the link for a full copy of the Job Description –

https://historicengland.org.uk/media/trxbl20o/development-advice-team-leader-sw.odt