Water Resources Drought Specialist - Grade 5

Number of jobs available 1 Region South West, West Midlands City/Town Birmingham , Kidderminster , Shrewsbury , Tewkesbury , Fradley Building/Site Riversmeet House, Hafren House, Mance House, Sentinel House, AQUA HOUSE BIRMINGHAM B3 1AQ Grade Staff Grade 5 Post Type Permanent Working Pattern Full Time Role Type Environment & Sustainability, Information Technology, Operational Delivery, Knowledge & Information Management Salary Minimum £37,462 Job description It’s a fantastic time to work for the Environment Agency as we the tackle the climate and nature emergency. As part of the area integrated planning team, you will be at the heart of ensuring the area is resilient and ready to respond to drought to safeguard the environment and water supplies.

You will build area drought resilience, working with your local drought coordinators and across multiple areas, to plan and deliver drought response improvements, working across the hub to ensure that each area in their hub has a current drought plan, a resilient level of drought capability and incident capacity. As part of the national drought communities of practice (water supply, agriculture, regulation), you will help deliver lessons learnt from recent drought, develop guidance (internal and external), develop and deliver training and work with external partners in testing and training.
In addition, you will:

• Shape approaches to drought planning - providing advice and technical support to area, pan-area and national teams.
• Providing support to key incident roles helping us meet the demands of improving our incident preparedness.
• Support area and national operations input during drought, being agile to meet the business need.
• Act as a drought specialist to deliver drought management, planning, preparedness, and response.
• Guide and advise others on drought issues, ensuring decisions are made on sound technical grounds
• Maintain links with national drought groups / staff on behalf of WMD Area – raising area issues and feeding back to Area Drought Leads. This includes the national drought practitioners’ group.
• Identify external engagement opportunities across the area and hub
• Participate and lead projects to deliver learning from recent drought and planning for drought.

The team The role will sit within the Integrated Environment Planning team providing drought resilience planning alongside providing regulation support and building a knowledge base on drought planning activity and response, expertise in your priority area (water supply, agriculture, regulation) to maintain environmental performance within the area and to the wider business. Experience/skills required Experience/skills required
Your excellent interpersonal and project management skills will be complimented by your ability to achieve results, solve problems, and communicate technical issues in a clear and concise manner to a range of audiences, supported by your drought knowledge.

Through your experience you will be able to demonstrate the following:

• Good interpersonal skills, communication, and presentation skills.
• Self-motivated and able to work on your own initiative or as part of a dispersed team.
• Excellent communication skills and experience of building relationships.
• Ability to work across Area teams, pan-area, OCS and E&B for a joined up and nationally consistent approach.
• Good judgement, problem solving and decision-making skills.
• Good planning & organisational skills, with the ability to handle multiple priorities and deliver to tight timescales.

Contact and additional information This is a permanent role. For further information contact the team leader Ruth Meek ruth.meek@environment-agency.gov.uk or drought lead Vicky Antram vicky.antram@environment-agency.gov.uk.
Interviews will be held remotely from week commencing 12th June.