Senior Planning Officer

We are growing our Planning Service and so we are looking for an ambitious and enthusiastic planner seeking to extend your experience. West Devon Borough and South Hams District Councils are shared authorities with an exciting, innovative, and forward-looking delivery model.

You will be working in a beautiful area of the country, combining the coasts and estuaries of South Hams with the outstanding landscapes in the shadow of Dartmoor National Park. The areas are rich in biodiversity, amazing landscapes, fantastic seaside and harbour towns, as well as historic towns and villages. We are part of the Devon and Cornwall Mining World Heritage Site, there are two AONB's, plenty of Conservation Areas and lots of listed buildings. We think it`s a truly outstanding place to work, that will offer the right candidate valuable experience in a wide range of casework, and an opportunity to shape a sustainable future as the Councils embark on a review of its Joint Local Plan.

We have made lots of improvements to our service over the last year. We are continuing to develop new ways of working and a recent new IT change is helping enormously to further improve performance. We have a positive and supportive management team, and a friendly group of officers. The Council was recently subject of a Peer Review and the Planning Service was highly praised for its recent improvements and overall performance.

You will join our busy team and help to deliver our ambitions to create an excellent Planning Service. As a new Senior Planning Officer, you will have the opportunity alongside your day-to-day work of planning applications, pre-applications and appeals, to get involved in wider projects across the service.

You should be qualified to degree level (or equivalent) within a Planning or related discipline and be a Member of the RTPI. You will have previous experience in Development Management with the ability to lead on a range of applications including pre-applications and planning applications and providing advice and guidance to Councillors. We are keen to promote from within, so there will be opportunities for you to extend your experience and knowledge by supporting more senior officers with major development proposals. You will also have a small number of planning officers to guide and mentor. You will be committed to delivering high quality developments whilst ensuring performance and excellent customer service is maintained.