Newham Council - Planning Policy Manager

About the role:
LB of Newham is currently reviewing their local development plan and are presenting to full council on the 28th April to see whether they can get authority to submit it for examination. The examination would start as soon as the local plan has been submitted. They haven't got an appointed inspector yet and the hearings would likely be in September at the earliest. They are in urgent need of a Planning Policy Manager that has experience of taking a plan through to examination. They need someone has who has done an examination before and knows how to run the process.
The role is reporting into the Director of Planning and Development. The team has a 2-part structure, including x2 officers working on Transport Planning who normally provide comments on planning applications. Then you have the Policy team which includes x4 Principals who are all very good, but they need someone to lead them and let them fulfil their potential. They all have their different topic areas.
The main challenge of this role is taking the plan through examination. One of the key problems with the plan is the very high affordable housing target, so the successful candidate will need to manage that through the examination along with the politics of it. Although the local plan is very well put together, they are looking for someone with political astuteness and that knows how to present things. Once the inspector starts looking at it, the affordable housing target is going to be one of the key issues and its' probably where the inspector will recommend the main modification. It will then be a case of playing this back to their mayor and other key portfolio holders and explaining why these changes are necessary.
This is a great opportunity as Newham has got one of the biggest growth agendas out of all the London Boroughs.
1. Previous EIP experience
2. Significant policy development experience
3. Team leader

If you are interested in this role please send your updated CV in the first instance.