Key Tasks/Principal Accountabilities
Provide accurate, innovative and up-to-date economic insights to the organisation to support the delivery of the 2025 Strategy.
Knowledge, Skills & Experience
Join us in shaping a future where nature and people thrive. Whether you're drawn to hands-on conservation or playing a vital part behind the scenes, your work at Natural England will support lasting benefits for the environment and society.
Our Role
Natural England is the Government’s adviser for the natural environment and the Nature regulator with a wide range of statutory duties and powers. We provide the evidence, expertise and advice to recover Nature and shape better places for people to live. We do this working through and with others.
Strategic Outcomes for Nature
Our strategy is framed through four strategic outcomes. Each of these outcomes reinforces and amplifies the others, and together they address environmental, social and economic actions critical to thriving nature.
Find out more about the work of Natural England at
Natural England’s Strategy: Recovering Nature for Growth, Health and Security - GOV.UK
The Role
We are seeking an experienced Economist to join our team of economists in the Chief Scientist Directorate of Natural England.
The team’s mission is to ensure the true value of the natural environment is fully reflected in decision-making. We achieve this by delivering rigorous economic analysis and applying it to real-world challenges, strengthening the evidence base for environmental economics and improving how it is used in practice.
This role requires you to apply technical expertise, experience, and critical thinking to complex and often novel questions. Working within the Chief Scientist’s Directorate, you will collaborate with colleagues across disciplines—including social science and natural capital specialists—to provide practical, evidence-based advice that directly informs policy and delivery
Economists at Natural England operate in a small, collaborative team engaged in diverse, high-profile projects. These range from supporting Spending Review bids and developing Impact Assessments, to producing Natural Capital Accounts, building economic models to evaluate environmental projects, and creating tools that help organisations integrate environmental considerations into both strategic and site-level decisions.
Our work spans a wide range of areas, including health and wellbeing, nature recovery, economic development, marine policy, and green finance.
A key part of this role will be providing quantitative analysis and assurance for Landscape Recovery project evaluations. Landscape Recovery (LR) is one of the Environmental Land Management Schemes, alongside Sustainable Farming Incentive and Countryside Stewardship. LR is aimed at landowners and managers who want to take an ambitious, transformational and large-scale approach to restoring nature. These projects unite multiple partners, who at the end of a two-year development phase are required to submit a series of delivery plans (deliverables) for assurance.
This assurance process is designed to assess the appropriateness and robustness of these projects ahead of agreeing any potential implementation agreements which would commit to 20-years of public funding. The role will involve validating data, addressing uncertainties, and ensuring recommendations are robust, evidence-driven, and impactful
Name: Jonathan Starling-Cross
E-mail: jonathan.starling-cross@naturalengland.org.uk
Telephone: 07435 417504
20/02/2026, 23:55 hours
The Civil Service welcomes applications from people who have recently left prison or have an unspent conviction. Read more about prison leaver recruitment.
This Vacancy is closed to applications.