6497 - Senior Reserve Manager, Ingleborough National Nature Reserve

This position is based at the Ingleborough National Nature Reserve base (Colt Park) within the Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire area team.

Key Tasks/Principal Accountabilities

Management Planning – Development and Implementation 

• Strategic leadership and coordination of Management Plan reviews across the Ingleborough NNR cluster, developing the operational plan for their reserves, setting the priorities for the years ahead. Includes identifying and liaising with relevant specialists and internal and external stakeholders to deliver the review process.
• Secure the staff and financial resourcing needed to deliver the management plan priorities, facilitate teamwork across the NNR group and wider NE colleagues to deliver our collective aims in those plans.
• Identify and help to manage strategic risks to delivery of the management plan in the immediate or longer term.

 Financial Management & Monitoring 

• Oversight of financial management of the budgets for the Ingleborough NNR cluster. Work with NNR staff to agree the resource required to carry out priority tasks for each NNR in the coming year; secure the funds through the annual bidding process; work with teams to ensure spend is tracked and audited, identify themes for cost recovery/income generation, and flag risks to delivery to Area Team FinCo and Business Manager.
• Responsible for identifying needs and works towards securing longer term investments (capital investment, external funding etc) to enhance future NNR operational delivery at a strategic level.
• Understands procurement processes, on or off framework, leading on the spend of programme budgets and provision of capital goods, and services over £25k. May lead or support the project management of major capital works. 

Implementation of Health & Safety (H&S) Frameworks and Legislation 

• Provide leadership of a safe working practice culture to all staff, including implementation and cascading key H&S information, ensuring local systems and ways of working are in place that support the implementation of H&S policies and procedures.
• Ensure robust management of all H&S risks pertinent to activities undertaken on the NNR are in place and controlled. Includes rigorous management and supervision arrangements are in place for volunteers, contractors and visitors including where a line manager the sign off of all risk assessments etc.
• Ensuring that all health, safety and wellbeing incidents involving staff, volunteers and contractors and, as appropriate, the public are reported, recorded and circumstances investigated in line with statutory requirements and following relevant Policy Supplements, Operational Standards and Guidance.
• Provide feedback on risks and issues to H&S team and national operations colleagues, and support development and implementation of new guidance and procedures where required.

 Connecting People with Nature 

• Be a champion for ambition and implement strategic direction for engagement, delivery and visitor experience that aligns with national strategic and programme priorities.
• Looking for opportunity to link into wider partnership ambitions and promote inclusion with diverse audiences.
• Work with Area Team and national comms and engagement leads to promote our NNRs.
• Work with national NNR teams to seek innovative opportunities for NNRs to demonstrate organisational goals for inclusion, outreach and visitor experience. 

Science, Research, Evidence & Monitoring 

• Identify opportunities for local NNR science, research, evidence and monitoring to support or contribute to wider organisational evidence priorities and programmes.
• Promote and provide opportunities for NNR knowledge and evidence to be shared across local, regional and national networks.

 Partnerships Management 

• Develop opportunities for local and regional networks and partnerships across NNR delivery, including with Approved Body partners and other potential NNR managing partners.
• Seek mutual benefit in partnerships that deliver across local, regional and national strategic NNR priorities (both internal and external) as well as delivering benefits to partners.

 People Leadership (Line Management) 

• Set clear direction and work programmes for their NNR cluster, specifically leading and enabling the NNR team(s) to deliver their NNR management plans.
• Ensure regular communication with Area Team leadership group, ensuring clarity of how NNRs will help deliver Area Team goals.

Knowledge, Skills & Experience 

• Collaborating and partnerships - demonstrates honesty and integrity, steers or leads NE’s contribution to existing partnerships, has skills for issue resolution. Understands partners’ objectives and needs; can apply strategic thinking to identify the potential for new partnerships/relationships and negotiating skills to establish them. Has leadership skills to engender collaboration between NNR groups.
• Decision making – decisive, demonstrating objectivity and flexibility, assessing risks and using best available evidence and professional judgement. Takes decisions that have consequences for reserves and their teams in a particular geography, strategically significant delivery programme or landscape scale. Addresses challenging issues and manages conflict.
• Work delivery - Manages complex, landscape scale NNR projects and programmes. Evaluates and assesses priorities and balances NNR resources across their area of responsibility. Working with NNR staff to ensure delivery is on time and to budget.
• Developing others - Demonstrates leadership, shares skills and knowledge, through coaching helps others to achieve their capability and career goals.
• Engaging communication - Speaking and listening skills, written and non-verbal communication, presentation skills, relating to multiple sites and/or controversial or high-risk issues, tailoring style to suite a wide variety of internal and external audiences.
• Environmental and organisational – An understanding of (i) local and regional environmental issues; (ii) Local Nature Recovery Strategies and (iii) Natural England’s vision, mission and objectives. An ability to communicate these to others, internally and externally, and show how these relate to the AT’s NNRs. Understands and influences NE and other stakeholders’ objectives to help develop shared plans and new opportunities for NNRs in a landscape-scale context.
• Health and Safety (H&S) – Takes responsibility for own H&S and the safety of those they supervise and/or line manage and of others on the reserve including visitors, contractors etc. Understands relevant aspects of H&S regulation and legislation and ensures all staff follow and implement organisational health and safety policies. If a line manager has an IOSH qualification. Demonstrating objectivity and professional judgement, oversees the maintenance and implementation of H&S standards across the reserve teams within their NNR group. If a line manager approves risk assessments for their NNR group.
• Technical skills – knowledge of the purposes of NNRs, the principles of site selection and the mechanisms involved in tenure, declaration and other relevant legal and regulatory processes. Competence in relevant IT. An understanding of the diversity of reserve activities and the types of methods, including:
  • Practical experience of habitat, livestock and reserve infrastructure management,
  • Experience of supervising and instructing staff and volunteers to carry out a range of practical tasks using machinery and tools (with relevant qualifications).
  • Experience of managing nature reserves, countryside parks or for a forestry or landscape management company including using corporate systems to plan and record NNR activities.
• Budget management and planning skills – including external funding. Competence in prioritising and planning programmes of work across multiple sites and years

We welcome and encourage applications from all communities. Natural England is accredited to the Disability Confident Scheme, which denotes organisations which have a positive attitude towards disabled people. Disabled applicants who meet the minimum requirements for the role at the shortlisting stage are guaranteed an invitation to interview.  

If you require a reasonable adjustment at interview, or there is anything else you would like the panel to take into consideration, you should notify us of this at application stage where possible, or well in advance of your interview. We now provide primary interview questions in advance for all formal recruitments.  

This vacancy uses competency-based assessment. We'll assess you against the competencies below during the selection process:   

• Technical Skills and Knowledge
• Working Safely
• Work Delivery
• Creating Resilient Landscapes and Seas
• Putting People at the Heart of the Environment

When completing the application form you should present relevant examples using the STAR format. Give us an example of how you have demonstrated the competency (which can be work related or from another area of your life) and tell us about the Situation, the specific Task you had to undertake, the specific Actions you took, and the Result (both immediate and in a wider context) of your Action.  

Please note that STAR format is not required when answering the Technical Skills & Knowledge competency.  

Examples should be given in no more than 250 words for each competency.  

If you are successful at the shortlisting stage, you will be invited to attend an interview via MS Teams or a suitable alternative, where you will be asked to give examples for all competencies as set out in the Job Description.  

This role is based at the Colt Park National Nature Reserve base, there is an expectation that you will work from the base most days. 

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 

Senior Reserve Manager - Role and Purpose 

The Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire Area Team plays a central role in delivering Natural England’s mission across some of the most ecologically significant and culturally treasured landscapes in the country. Within this area, Ingleborough National Nature Reserve stands out as a flagship site – an exceptional upland environment where rare habitats, species recovery and landscape scale conservation come together. 

The Senior Reserve Manager will lead and support a skilled practical conservation team of staff and volunteers who are responsible for managing a diverse and dynamic landscape, from limestone pavements and upland hay meadows to montane habitats and important species assemblages. They will have responsibility for their own Health & Safety and that of staff, visitors, volunteers, contractors on the reserve. 

Working closely with colleagues across Natural England, as well as local partners, landowners, researchers and community stakeholders, the Senior Reserve Manager will provide strategic direction to shape the future of the reserve. They will engage the with wider area team and organisation – helping to shape policy and future direction. Their focus will be on long term ecological restoration, underpinned by evidence-based decision making and innovative approaches to nature recovery.

This includes driving forward partnership-based conservation, contributing to an emerging landscape recovery scheme, and preparing for the development of a new reserve base that will strengthen the reserve’s operational capability and its presence within the local community.

Our National Nature Reserves (NNRs) are at the forefront of nature recovery and people engagement and are at the heart of achieving Natural England’s ambitions. This role is fundamental to the delivery of the NNR Management plans objectives and the ambitions of NNRs providing key operational delivery on the reserves, thereby ensuring the NNR series can achieve its role in delivering the Government’s ambitious 25-year plan.

Name: Liam O’Reilly

E-mail: liam.oreilly@naturalengland.org.uk

Tel: 07881 766681