6618 - Senior Internal Readiness and Change Officer

Join us in shaping a future where nature and people thrive. Whether you're drawn to hands-on conservation or playing a vital part behind the scenes, your work at Natural England will support lasting benefits for the environment and society.

Our Role

Natural England is the Government’s adviser for the natural environment and the Nature regulator with a wide range of statutory duties and powers. We provide the evidence, expertise and advice to recover Nature and shape better places for people to live. We do this working through and with others.

Strategic Outcomes for Nature

Our strategy is framed through four strategic outcomes. Each of these outcomes reinforces and amplifies the others, and together they address environmental, social and economic actions critical to thriving nature.

Recovering Nature– Increased scale and quality of places where nature thrives.
Building Better Places– Greener homes and infrastructure create healthier, more investable places, recognising we live better where nature thrives around us.
Improving Health and Wellbeing– Build nature into everyday life so people can support, access and benefit from nature, wherever they live.

Delivering Security through Nature– Nature helps us adapt to the threats of a changing climate and improves our national security, supporting more resilient food production, healthy soils, clean and plentiful water and clean air.

Find out more about the work of Natural England at:
Natural England’s Strategy: Recovering Nature for Growth, Health and Security - GOV.UK

Job description

The Role

The Nature Restoration Fund (NRF) supports development while delivering targeted environmental protection and nature recovery. It introduces new mechanisms to secure environmental improvements where development impacts protected sites or species. Through Environmental Delivery Plans (EDPs), the NRF identifies and delivers strategic, landscape scale conservation measures to achieve improved outcomes for nature.

A fantastic opportunity has arisen for an ambitious individual to join the NRF team, contributing to the transition of the NRF from policy and design into operational delivery.

This role sits within the NRF Project Management Office (PMO) and reports to the Principal Change Manager. The programme is at an early and formative stage, requiring structured change management to support implementation across Natural England.

The role will lead defined elements of change activity for the NRF programme. This includes embedding change management approaches, supporting the assessment of organisational readiness, and supporting preparations for the operational and cultural impacts of the NRF.

Working across the organisation, the postholder will engage with teams to help them understand how the NRF affects their work, support them through transition, and enable adoption of new processes, roles, and ways of working.

Prospective candidates should be aware the NRF is a unique agile environment. The ideal candidate would be highly ambitious, comfortable in ambiguity and confident when faced with challenge
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Key Tasks/Principal Accountabilities

• Lead defined change management activities within the Nature Restoration Fund (NRF) programme, supporting the transition from design to operational delivery.
• Apply change management frameworks and tools to structure and support implementation activity across the programme.
• Engage with colleagues and partners in their area of expertise to deliver Natural England outcomes.
• Resolve problems which involve considering new approaches, testing options, judgement and interpretation in making recommendations or determining appropriate action, escalating and raising risks as appropriate.
• Support the assessment of organisational readiness for change, identifying risks, dependencies, and capability gaps, and proposing actions to address them.
• Work with programme, policy, and operational teams to understand how the NRF will affect ways of working and team structures.
• Develop and deliver change activity, including stakeholder engagement, communications inputs, transition planning, and adoption activities.
• Support teams across Natural England understanding their role in the NRF by providing advice, guidance, and practical support, including in-person training.
• Contribute to identifying and managing cultural change implications, helping to embed new behaviours and ways of working.
• Track and report progress of change activity, escalating risks and issues as appropriate through PMO governance.
• Ensure change activity aligns with agreed programme milestones, governance, and dependency management arrangements.
• Capture learning and feedback to inform continuous improvement as the NRF moves into delivery.
• Work collaboratively with Natural England’s Change team, ensuring the model of the NRF fits into NE’s future operational design.
• Collaborate with Comms & Engagement to ensure timely, plain English updates.