6362 - Senior Economist

Key Tasks/Principal Accountabilities

• Lead economic analysis to support environmental decision-making, including natural capital valuation and development of analytical tools.
• Collaborate across disciplines and with external partners on high-profile projects such as Spending Reviews and Impact Assessments.
• Provide quantitative analysis and assurance for Landscape Recovery project evaluations, working closely with Defra and NE colleagues to validate data, resolve uncertainties, and ensure robust, evidence-based recommendations.
• Lead and support analysis, research and advice that meets the government's technical analytical professional standards including appraisal, business case development, and environmental valuation.

Provide accurate, innovative and up-to-date economic insights to the organisation to support the delivery of the 2025 Strategy.

Knowledge, Skills & Experience

• Expertise in economics or environmental economics (essential).
• Undergraduate or postgraduate degree in economics (or environmental economics) or equivalent experience (essential)
• Strong numerical and analytical skills, with experience applying these in economic contexts (essential)
• Ability to explain complex economic concepts clearly to non-economists. (essential)
• Good verbal and written communication skills and ability to work effectively in a team. (essential)
• Ability to understand the full context of cases/projects and apply interpretive, evaluative, analytical, and problem-solving skills (essential).
• Ensure robustness, quality, and impact of evidence and analysis within your specialism (essential).
• Ability to lead analytical and research projects or provide the analytical leadership in cross-cutting work (essential)
• Demonstrate responsibility for the delivery of analysis, advice, support and research that is both high standard economics and suitable for our customers (essential)
• Experience of being involved in negotiations with partners and stakeholders (desirable)

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.

• Recovering Nature – Increased scale and quality of places where nature thrives.
• Building Better Places – Greener homes and infrastructure create healthier, more investable places, recognising we live better where nature thrives around us.
• Improving Health and Wellbeing – Build nature into everyday life so people can support, access and benefit from nature, wherever they live.
• Delivering Security through Nature – Nature helps us adapt to the threats of a changing climate and improves our national security, supporting more resilient food production, healthy soils, clean and plentiful water and clean air.

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