Head of Sustainability (Places)

Head of Sustainability (Places)

Reporting into – Director of Strategy & Planning

Contract – Permanent

Location – Victoria Station House/remote

About Us

Welcome to Places for London, TfL’s property company, where your career can make a meaningful impact on the landscape of a global city. As an integral part of the London community, we are building more than 20,000 new and sustainable homes over the next 10 years across the capital.

We are one of London’s largest landlords, providing flexible and accessible workspaces for 1,500 customers, over 90 per cent of which are small businesses.

We’re creating and curating a legacy that reflects London’s diversity, ambition, and spirit. By transforming underused land into exceptional places, we deliver sustainable living and well-connected communities for generations to come. Our work is rooted in community, driven by purpose, and built for lasting impact. Every home is a step toward a more inclusive, vibrant, and resilient city.

About the role

We are looking for someone to join us as our Head of Sustainability. Reporting to Mark Farrow, the Director of Strategy & Planning (Places), and take the lead role developing, implementing, and embedding our Sustainability & Inclusivity Strategy across our substantial property portfolio.

Your key responsibilities will include:

• Implementing and continuously improving Places for London’s Sustainability & Inclusivity Strategy, taking a structured approach to managing performance including scorecards and external performance indicators (including GRESB and Better Building Partnership roadmap). Ensuring alignment with TfL’s Green strategy, roadmap and associated plans, and report progress as needed
• Overseeing the development, implementation and future iteration of the Sustainable Estates Framework on our existing estate, ensuring sustainability is fully integrated in our asset refurbishment and enhancement programmes and delivers high-performing assets with relevant Energy Performance Certificate and BREEAM/ISO 14001 compliance
• Defining and leading carbon reduction activity across Places for London in support of the achievement of the Mayor’s Net Zero ambition and TfL’s science-based targets, and in line with best practice in the built environment sector
• Driving comprehensive understanding of climate risk across the Places for London estate and how it will evolve over time, and ensure it is addressed with a comprehensive series of mitigating measures
• Establishing Places for London as a leader in thinking on and delivery of social value initiatives, working across the business in doing so. Progressively increasing and improving understanding of the social, environmental and economic impact of Places for London’s activities and ensure they are reported broadly
• Acting as a visible and credible sustainability ambassador across Places for London and its partners, TfL and externally including representing the business at industry forums. Developing close working relationships with all Places business units from director down in support of a one-team integrated approach to working
• Leading and developing a high-performing sustainability team augmented by partners as needed, and drive improvements in sustainability capability across the Places for London business, including full integration of sustainability in decision-making processes.

About you

You will have:

• A proven track record developing and implementing sustainability/climate strategies and programmes in real estate or property-led businesses, including certification, GRESB reporting, carbon accounting, energy and water efficiency initiatives (Essential).
• Strong commercial acumen and a demonstrable ability to balance sustainability goals with financial outcomes, including advising on sustainability in commercial decision making, investments, asset refurbishments and disposals (Essential).
• Strong experience of driving sustainability governance and performance reporting frameworks to senior leadership, investors, and regulators
• Excellent stakeholder engagement skills across multi-functional teams and a proven ability to influence at executive level and drive organisation-wide change (Essential).
• Deep working knowledge of ESG and sustainability frameworks, the regulatory environment, and relevant tools and strategies for achieving improved outcomes (Essential).
• Significant experience leading sustainability or ESG teams and growing whole-organisation capability.

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.

Application Process 

Please apply using your CV (no more than 2 sides A4) and a one page covering letter (no more than 1 side A4, Arial 12). Think carefully about the skills, knowledge and experience in the advert and cover this in your CV and cover letter.

The closing date for applications is Tuesday 27th January 2026 (23:59)

For a more detailed copy of the job description, please contact Jay Patel jaypatel@tfl.gov.uk or the Executive Recruitment Team on talentacquisitionandexecutiverecruitment@tfl.gov.uk

Eligibility – Internal employees 

Probation:
In line with our Resourcing Policy (Feb 2014), internal employees are required to complete their probationary period before applying for internal TfL positions. Please ensure you have successfully completed your probation before submitting an application for this role, otherwise your application may be withdrawn.

Formal warnings:
Internal employees with any current formal warnings are not eligible to apply for internal TfL vacancies until expiry of the warning. Ineligible applications may be withdrawn. Details of what is defined as a current formal warning can be found on Platform: https://transportforlondon.sharepoint.com/sites/Instructions-and-guidance-people-performance-and-rewards/SitePages/Applying-for-a-vacancy-with-a-formal-warning.aspx

NPL Applications 
Applications to internally advertised roles can only be accepted from temporary workers who are on PAYE terms via agency, or PAYE via Umbrella Companies. Temporary workers who are paid through their own limited companies are not covered by the Agency Worker Regulations and are ineligible to apply.

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