Environment / Town Planning Specialists

Key Information

Job title: Environment / Town Planning Specialists
These roles are known internally as Investment Planning Specialist - Environment / Investment Planning Specialist - Town Planning

Salary: From £36,500.00     Grade: Pay band 2

Contract type: TfL     Reference: 1452 

Team: Professional Services     Directorate: Investment Planning

Contract details: Combination     Location: Southwark, london SE1 with hybrid working
Hybrid working within this role enables a balance of 50 per cent of time split between the office and home over a 4-week period. Hybrid working arrangements can evolve subject to business requirements 

Application closing date: 24 June 2025 @ 2059

Overview of role

We are delighted to advertise a number of opportunities in our multidisciplinary Investment Planning Professional Services team for Environment and Town Planning specialists.

These roles involve working on a range of TfL projects, utilising your specialist skills, knowledge and experience to shape and support their planning and delivery.

In these roles, you’ll have the opportunity to influence the development of TfL’s projects, and we are looking for candidates who are motivated to help make London a better, greener and more inclusive city.

We are recruiting two Environment specialist roles and one Town Planning specialist role:

Specialist – Environment: These roles are in the team’s environment function, playing a vital role in supporting the design and delivery of environmentally robust transport projects with a focus on environmental assessment and evaluation.

Your work will range from supporting the Environmental Impact Assessment of major new infrastructure projects, to embedding environmental considerations as part of optioneering and scheme design, to shaping our approach to carbon, biodiversity and climate adaptation. You’ll work closely with multidisciplinary teams across TfL to embed environmental best practice at the core of projects.

With your knowledge, experience and enthusiasm for sustainability and the environment you’ll work alongside project sponsors, project managers, engineers, and other environment experts to advise projects on specific environmental topics; support development of planning applications and major consents applications such as Transport & Works Act Orders; and shape, guide and influence the application of environmental processes across TfL’s investment programme.

Specialist – Town Planning: This role offers a rare opportunity to join the team’s specialist Town Planning and Heritage Team, which plays an important role in keeping London’s transport moving and delivering transport improvements.  Many of our projects are transformational and directly support the Mayor of London’s vision to achieve sustainable transport use and tackle the climate change emergency.

You’ll lead on, or assist with, identifying, progressing and obtaining town planning consents for schemes promoted by TfL. This includes identifying the correct consent route and fully utilising TfL’s permitted development powers. You’ll work closely with colleagues across the Professional Services team, including environment and urban design specialists.

Schemes we work on include upgrades of existing infrastructure (e.g. providing step free access to stations), installation of new infrastructure (e.g. electric vehicle charging points), major schemes for new stations/upgrades and line extensions such as the Bakerloo Line Extension.

The Team: TfL’s Investment Planning directorate is responsible for ensuring our £2 billion / year capital investment programme delivers the ambitions and commitments of TfL and the Mayor as set out in the London Plan, the Mayor’s Transport and Environment Strategies and TfL’s Corporate Environment Plan. From improvements for walking and cycling, to maintaining and renewing our Underground services, to developing new rail lines and other major projects, our work touches all corners of the transport network.

Professional Services is a newly formed team of specialists and subject matter experts who sit at the heart of TfL’s Investment Planning directorate - supporting and shaping projects vital to the future of the Capital.  The role provides an opportunity to learn and develop your skills and you would be fully supported to develop within the role.  It is an exciting time to join us, and we are looking forward to welcoming you to the team.

Flexible working arrangements:  As part of our continued focus on wellbeing and diversity, Investment Planning welcomes and supports flexible working arrangements including part time and job share. This campaign is open to those who already work flexibly or would like to explore this as an option. Company policy is that all colleagues spend at least 50% of their time at work either in the office or on site. For these roles you would be expected to work in the office three days a week (pro rata) for at least the first three months as this contact with your colleagues and clients will be important to help you become familiar with TfL and our projects, as well as for your training and development.

The team currently works from TfL offices at Southwark. On occasion you may be required to work at other offices where your projects are based, such as Stratford.

Key Accountabilities

• Supports the provision of high quality, technical advice on projects and wider initiatives, to maximise benefits and minimise risks to TfL, working with colleagues including your Principal Specialist
• Provides robust advice and recommendations on matters associated with your technical area, helping to ensure that project decisions are appropriately informed, supported by Principal Specialists
• Monitor trends and identifies risks, challenges and opportunities associated with your technical specialism and takes appropriate action
• Assists with responding to consultations on policy under direction of the Principal Specialist, ensuring TfL's views are accurately represented
• Helps to build strong collaborative relationships with internal and external stakeholders to efficiently achieve the required outcomes for projects

Skills, Knowledge and Experience

Skills

• Good standard of written (including report writing) and verbal communication (Essential)
• Ability to build strong collaborative working relationships with colleagues in other departments / teams, and successfully present to, influence and negotiate with internal and external stakeholders (Essential)
• Resilience, ability to work independently with limited guidance, under pressure in a fast-paced environment and manage conflicting priorities to achieve tight deadlines (Essential)
• Critical thinking and the ability to quickly understand issues and make sound decisions based on information available (Essential)
• Good IT skills including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, SharePoint, and other relevant software packages (Essential)

Knowledge

• Relevant qualification at degree level or equivalent work experience (Essential)
• Knowledge of national, regional and London policy developments, legislation and trends relevant to discipline (Essential)
• Membership, or working towards membership, of a professional body relevant to the role (for instance, RTPI or IEMA) (Desirable)
• Knowledge and understanding of how transport (or other infrastructure) projects are planned, developed and delivered (Desirable)
• Knowledge of statutory consents and the legal requirements and processes involved in delivering infrastructure projects relevant to discipline (for instance environmental appraisal and environmental impact assessment or the different town planning consent regimes relevant to transport projects) (Desirable)
• Understanding of the role and duties of London’s transport organisations e.g. TfL, Department for Transport (DfT), Greater London Authority (GLA) and the boroughs; and of the main transport policy and planning issues facing London (Desirable)

Experience

• Good experience of researching and reviewing relevant, legislation, policy, guidance, and technical reports, analysing and presenting the results for different audiences (Essential)
• Experience of applying specialism to weigh up potentially conflicting issues and making clear recommendations (Essential)
• Experience of working with others to deliver high quality outputs (Essential)
• Experience of working within relevant legislative, policy and consenting regimes (Desirable)

Application Process

• Please apply using your CV and a one-page covering letter
• Think carefully about the skills, knowledge and experience in the advert and cover this in your CV and cover letter
• PDF format preferred and do not include any photographs or images

Please clearly indicate which specialism (Environment or Town Planning) you prefer in your cover letter.

If you would like to learn more about the role, we are holding drop-in sessions via Microsoft Teams, where you can meet some of our existing team and get a chance to ask any questions you may have.

18 June 12:30
Click here to join the meeting
Meeting ID: 344 195 713 198 6 
Passcode: hL9T9jF6

Other information

The successful candidates will be selected through an in-person interview that will involve competency and technical questions, including an unseen technical exercise.

Interviews are provisionally scheduled to take place from 28 July.

Equality, diversity and inclusion

We are committed to equality, diversity and inclusion. We want to represent the city we serve, which will help us become a more innovative and efficient organisation. Our goal is to make our recruitment as inclusive as possible. We are a disability confident employer who guarantee an interview to any disabled candidate who meets all of the essential criteria. We also use anonymising software that removes identifying information from CVs and cover letters to make the process fair.

Benefits

In return for your commitment and expertise, you will enjoy excellent benefits and scope to grow.  Rewards vary according to the level of role but mostly include the below:

• Final salary pension scheme
• Free travel for you on the TfL network
• Reimbursement of 75% of the cost of a standard class Ticket for National Rail travel from home or 75% reimbursement on a 28-day flexi ticket
• 30 days annual leave plus public and bank holidays
• TfL is committed to work-life balance, operating a hybrid working approach where business and role requirements allow
• Private healthcare discounted scheme (optional)
• Tax-efficient cycle-to-work programme
• Retail, health, leisure and travel offers
• Discounted Eurostar travel

We will make every effort to give you as much notice as possible, however some interviews/assessments could be organised at short notice.