Infrastructure Planning Officer

The Infrastructure Planning Officer ensures developers and local planning authorities understand the value of, and need for, community infrastructure in order to facilitate balanced communities and promote sustainable growth while minimising the impact of development on the local taxpayer.

The role involves comprehensive oversight of housing and employment developments within the planning application process, assessing their impact on community infrastructure requirements. This includes evaluating infrastructure needs, costing them, and requesting appropriate developer contributions through Local Planning Authorities.

The postholder collaborates with internal and external stakeholders to handle planning appeals, ensuring adherence to regulations and submitting necessary documentation to the Planning Inspectorate. They negotiate detailed community infrastructure requirements and oversee the legal aspects, such as S106 agreements, to safeguard the interests of the organization.

Additionally, they audit developer agreements, monitor developments, estimate contribution timelines, and enforce payment collection to facilitate timely infrastructure provision. Furthermore, they assist in constructing business cases for community infrastructure funding and ensure proper expenditure alignment with legal obligations, maintaining a clear audit trail.

Accountabilities

· Responsible for assessing housing and employment developments through the planning application process to identify the impact on community infrastructure requirements.

· Responsible for costing infrastructure and requesting appropriate developer contributions, via Local Planning Authorities, with a sound justification for each request in order to mitigate the impact of development within the local and wider community, including providing advice for the larger strategic sites.

· Responsible for identifying planning appeals made against refused applications and working collaboratively with stakeholders in order to produce and submit Appeal Statements and Statements of Common Ground to the Planning Inspectorate.

· In response to planning applications, negotiate detailed community infrastructure requirements and instruct Essex Legal Services to produce S106 agreements and unilateral undertakings requiring community infrastructure, to ensure that all legal documents protect ECC with regard to the payment and spend of developer funded contributions.

· Responsible for auditing all developer agreements in favour of ECC and recording them accurately on the relevant database to ensure that other users have accurate information available to enable decisions in respect of spend.

· Responsible for monitoring developments, including site visits where required, in order to estimate when developer contributions will fall due to enable timely collection of these and aid project planning.

· Responsible for calculating indexation, collecting contributions (including works and land transfers) and instigating enforcement action where appropriate in order to ensure that ECC receives payments in a timely manner to enable the provision of community infrastructure.

· Responsible for assisting in the construction of business cases for Community Infrastructure to enable claims to be made, and funding administered, from Community Infrastructure Levies, to enable funding to be assigned to projects that meet the purposes for which the monies were secured.

· Responsible for ensuring that contributions received are spent in accordance with ECC's duties under the relevant legal agreements/legislation to maintain a clear audit trail of spending so evidence can be provided to developers and Local Planning Authorities as required.

· Responsible for monitoring all S106 agreements and unilateral undertakings to ensure all requirements are met in respect of ECC related developer contributions and works and liaise with Strategic Development (Highways Transportation and Development) as required in this respect.

· Specific individual and shared targets and objectives are defined annually within the performance management framework.

· Educated to 'A' level or equivalent by experience.

· Evidence of continuing professional development and knowledge in relevant professional area.

· Demonstrable understanding of the planning system as it relates to developer contributions and community infrastructure.

· Ability to read and understand complex language contained in legal documents and perform calculations and manipulate data to make sound judgments.

· Proven experience in supporting planning, legal or financial processes and mechanisms.

· Proven record of taking responsibility for task completion and delivering work within agreed time-scales.

· Strong interpersonal and negotiation skills with the ability to deal with challenging situations and use effective influencing skills.

· Strong communication skills to ensure the effective delivery of consultation responses and in liaison with ECC officers, developers and other external bodies.

As part of employment with Essex County Council (ECC) should your role require a DBS check you will be required to register with the DBS update service. The DBS update service ensures all registered DBS certificates are kept up to date and allows authorised parties to view the status of your certificate. This is an annual subscription, and you will be responsible for ensuring this is maintained. For further information on the DBS update service please go to https://www.gov.uk/dbs-update-service