Soft Landscape Officer

Role Responsibility

Do you want to help manage and improve the landscape in the Garden of England?

Do you have an interest and good understanding of the natural environment?

Do you have a background in landscape maintenance or conservation, with experience of applying this in practical situations?

Do you have experience in customer service, managing landscape contractors, contract monitoring, administration, and reporting on performance data?

An exciting career opportunity has arisen for a suitably experienced, competent, and enthusiastic individual to play a key role within the Highways & Transportation Soft Landscape Team.  This role is fundamental in supporting the Landscape Manager and team in providing an excellent level of customer satisfaction and contract management to maintain and improve the highway landscape.

You will help deliver all aspects of highway related landscape management. This includes management of landscape assets, contractor performance management, re-active site visits, specifying and procurement of contract works, customer service and finding opportunities for improving the highway natural environment for biodiversity, pollinators, and nature.

You will have a strong background and knowledge of landscape disciplines, environment, or horticulture, with experience of applying this in practical situations. You will have contract management expertise and been involved in landscape management, ideally within a Local Authority environment.

You will be self-motivated, confident, organised, accurate and be able to work both independently and as part of a team.  You will need to demonstrate excellent customer service, problem solving, supervisory, technical and computer literacy. Knowledge and experience of GIS will be an advantage. Excellent people communication skills will be required to enable the post holder to deal with a wide-ranging customer, stakeholder and contractor base. 

You may have, or be working towards, chartered membership of the Landscape Institute or other relevant professional organisation or qualification. Structured training and industry certification will be provided for all elements of this role.

The position can be based at our Aylesford or Ashford highway depots and hybrid working.  However, the ability to work at other depots and travel independently and be flexible to work across the entire county will be a pre-requisite. 

This post is considered by KCC to be a customer-facing position. The Council therefore has a statutory duty under Part 7 of the Immigration Act (2016) to ensure that post holders have a command of spoken English/Welsh sufficient for the effective performance of the job requirements. The appropriate standards are set out in the Job Description/Person Specification. 

The post comes with the advantages of 28 and up to 30 days holiday (after 5 years) + public holidays, flexible working hours, an excellent local government pension scheme, sickness provision, childcare voucher scheme, staff discount scheme and support with professional development.

This is a full-time permanent post (37 hours per week, Monday to Friday)

Apply now, as great candidates will be invited for an early interview.

 A successful candidate will respond comprehensively to the application questions on the Councils Recruitment Hub.

Contact Details

For further information regarding this role, please contact:

Paul Woodhatch, Highways Landscape Manager, 03000 413 872

About the Company

KCC is committed to building a workforce which reflects the diversity of the county's working residents, encouraging applications from people of all ages, abilities, genders, sexual orientations, ethnic backgrounds and faiths, and aspires to create an inclusive workplace where everyone can be themselves at work.

Please note – if you are interested, please apply as soon as possible as the closing date for this advert may be earlier than stated should a number of suitably qualified candidates apply.