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The Friday Five 25.03.22

Published on: 25 Mar 2022

5 dandelions square [square]1. ENVIRONMENTAL PLANNER/EIA CONSULTANT


Location: West Midlands

The job: “We [recruitment agency] are looking for an environmental planner/ EIA consultant to join one of the UKs leading development consultancies. Based out of their gorgeous converted barn head office in the West Midlands, you will be lucky enough to be close enough to get to the city, but within minutes of some of the most beautiful walks. Although this role will be office based, they operate very flexibly and you will have access to other offices as well as working from home.

“With projects ranging from large scale residential and infrastructure, to smaller retail and leisure, you can expect to work on a huge variety and gain maximum exposure. Ideal candidates will have demonstrable postgraduate experience (1 or more years) in EIA project management and co-ordination, ideally in relation to large scale residential and commercial led development projects.

“You will have experience of working with multi-disciplinary teams and a thorough understanding of a range of technical disciplines, along with good knowledge of the UK planning processes, UK EIA legislation and best practice guidelines.”

Villa Park [square]Fun fact: The West Midlands is home to five of the oldest professional football teams in the world, three of whom were founding members of the Football League in 1888.

Aston Villa (founded 1874), West Bromwich Albion (1876) and Wolverhampton Wanderers (1877) were among the 12 teams to contest the first league season in 1888-89. It's been suggested that the league emerged from an invitation by William McGregor of Aston Villa FC to other clubs to play regular games of football. All the clubs came form the Midlands and North West.

The first round of games was played on 8 September 1888 and pitched Villa and Wolves against each other in a local derby, which ended 1-1. Villa won the return game at home 2-1 and finished the season in second place on 29 points, a single point above their rivals Wolves in 3rd. The league's runaway winners with 40 points were Preston North End, who also won the FA Cup that year.

Preston won it again the following year, but it didn't take too long for the Villa to take their first title, in 1894. By 1910 they had won six titles and four FA Cups and remained England's most successful club until well into the 1960s/early 1970s.

Both Wolves and Villa are currently in the top English division - the Premier League. West Brom and Birmingham are a division below. The other of the big five - Walsall has bounced around the lower professional divisions for much of its history and currently plays in League Two.

Find out more and apply

2. SENIOR PLANNING ENFORCEMENT OFFICER, WEST LINDSEY DISTRICT COUNCIL


Location: Gainsborough, Lincolnshire

The job: “We are seeking an experienced senior planning enforcement officer who has a track record of excellent case management and is able to deal with complex and high-risk cases. This role presents an exciting and challenging opportunity for an individual who really wants to make a difference within communities and actively improve the district as a place to live.

“The planning enforcement function is a key service provided by the council and the successful applicant will help to ensure that the service is continually improving and is effectively delivering the council’s local enforcement plan.

“It is expected that candidates will have experience of dealing with complex planning enforcement matters including dealing with appeals in all formats, serving of a range of notices and undertaking prosecutions. Management experience would be desirable, but not essential and opportunities to develop this aspect of the role would be provided along with support from across the broader Housing and Environmental Enforcement work area.”

George Eliot [square]Fun fact: Gainsborough was very likely the basis of the fictional town of St Ogg in George Eliot's great 1860 novel The Mill on the Floss.

There's pretty good reason for thinking this: first, Eliot stayed in Gainsborough in 1859, at the house of a shipbuilder in Bridge Street. The bridge, a nearby willow tree and the old town hall are described in the book.

Second, Thomas Miller's Our Old Town, published in 1857, features describes the true story of a miller from Gainsborough who loses a lawsuit after assaulting an adversary. A similar plot features in The Mill on the Floss.

Third, the novel ends with a flood that recalls the Trent Aegir, the 1.5m tidal bore that occurs under certain conditions in Gainsborough. There is an argument that it was the Trent Aegir that the Danish King Cnut famously tried to turn back the tide. Gainsborough is also the place where his father, Sweyn Forkbeard, was murdered in 1013 and also where, more than a century and a half earlier, King Alfred the Great's bride, Ealhswith, had been born.  In the opening pages of The Mill on the Floss, Eliot describes St Ogg's thus:

"It is one of those old, old towns which impress one as a continuation and outgrowth of nature, as much as the nests of the bower-birds or the winding galleries of the white ants; a town which carries the traces of its long growth and history like a millennial tree, and has sprung up and developed in the same spot between the river and the low hill from the time when the Roman legions turned their backs on it from the camp on the hillside, and the long-haired sea-kings came up the river and looked with fierce, eager eyes at the fatness of the land. It is a town "familiar with forgotten years". The shadow of the Saxon hero-king still walks there fitfully, reviewing the scenes of his youth and love-time, and is met by the gloomier shadow of the dreadful heathen Dane, who was stabbed in the midst of his warriors by the sword of an invisible avenger..."

Lovely.

Find out more and apply

3. PLANNING OFFICER, DURHAM COUNTY COUNCIL


Location: Durham, County Durham

The job: “Durham County Council is the largest authority in the North East of England. It handles around 4,000 planning applications a year and covers a diverse range of environments including the Durham Dales, the Durham City World Heritage Site and Heritage Coastline, along with a mix of towns and villages in between.

“In recent years the service has developed a reputation for pragmatism and an ability to drive forward the major development schemes crucial to improving the economic base of the county. The county has recently benefited from £3.6 billion of major inward investment projects and the development management service has played the lead role in securing many of these investments.

“The role requires development management experience including sound understanding of process. The successful applicants will be expected to deal with a broad range of cases, many of which will be controversial and complex in nature. However, technical planning knowledge is only a basic requirement. The successful candidates will be expected to demonstrate a strong understanding of the need for customer focus, the ability to apply quick and risk based decision making as well as demonstrating an outcome focused and personable manner.”

Durham Cathedral sanctuary doorknocker [square]Fun fact: There is a knocker on the door of Durham Cathedral in the shape of a lion holding a ring in the form of a snake in its mouth. This is the Sanctuary Knocker and dates back to the 12th century.

It's so called because those who ‘had committed a great offence,’ such as murder in self-defence or breaking out of prison, could rap the knocker, and would be given 37 days of sanctuary within which they could try to reconcile with their enemies or plan their escape.

While guests of the cathedral, they would be given a safe haven until their eventual departure or handed over to the proper authorities. Those who had been granted sanctuary were given black robes to wear, with a St. Cuthbert’s Cross stitched onto the left shoulder (the remains of St Cuthbert are kept in the cathedral).

The right of sanctuary was abolished by an act of parliament towards the beginning of the 17th century. 

Find out more and apply

4. STRATEGIC DEVELOPMENT TEAM LEADER, ARUN DISTRICT COUNCIL

Location: Arun, West Sussex/Hybrid

The job: “Arun is a district with a vision to be a vibrant and attractive place to live, work and visit. The district features coastal towns, including Bognor Regis and Littlehampton with their seaside heritage and regeneration schemes, and the historic market town of Arundel, which acts as a gateway to the South Downs National Park.

“Our strategic development team leader will lead a small team of planning officers managing the case load of large strategic planning applications within the district. We have a large number of strategic sites that were allocated within the 2018 adopted local plan. These range from sites that are now well advanced to large outline applications that have only recently been submitted and from 300 to 4,000 dwellings. A team leader is required to manage a team of principal planning officers and monitoring and implementation officers to manage the on-going delivery of high quality development on these sites.

“This position has an extensive amount of public contact, the occasional presentation of items at committee, attendance at public meetings, hearings and other meetings as required.”

Butlin's Bognor Regis [square]Fun fact: Bognor Regis, being pretty much the sunniest place in the UK, is - appropriately - the site of one of three remaining Butlin's holiday camps (there were nine at one time). Though the camp itself wasn't actually open until 1960, Butlin's had a presence in the town from 1932.

It was then that a young amusements and entertainment entrepreneur Billy Butlin opened an amusement park similar to one he had launched in Skegness five years earlier. 'Butlin's Recreation Shelter' had early Dodgem cars and one-armed bandits from the get-go. A year later, Bultin opened a zoo on Bognor seafront which housed contained brown, black and polar bears, hyenas, leopards, pelicans, kangaroos, and monkeys.

But it wasn't until 1959 that Billy Butlin bought the 16 hectare site at the east end of the Bognor Promenade, where the camp still sits today. At its opening, it contained the classic Butlin's ingredients: Redcoats, a funfair, a ballroom, a boating lake, tennis courts, a sports field (for the three legged and egg & spoon races and the donkey derby), table tennis and snooker tables, amusement arcades, a theatre and arcades of shops.

At its peak, the camp saw 6,000 guests moving in every Saturday whilst the last 6,000 left the same day. Some 1,300 staff looked after the needs of the guests, including the Redcoats.

When the camp opened, all guests were catered on either full or half board basis; however, in 1968 Butlin handed running of the company to his son Bobby Butlin, who introduced self-catering accommodation as a means to reduce labour costs. Nowadays, though self-catering chalets remain, guest are as likely to stay in an on-site hotel as a chalet.

Today the resort caters for more than 385,000 visitors per year with 300,000 being resident and 85,000 visiting for the day. But a decent number of peopler as likely to stay off-season duding one of many themed music Big Weekenders as they are during the season - with Butlin's Bognor Regis hosting  70s munis weekenders, soul weekenders and the rather excellent (we can attest) Rockaway Beach indie rock festival. All tastes are catered for!

Find out more and apply

5. PLANNING OFFICER (DEVELOPMENT MANAGEMENT), DARTMOOR NATIONAL PARK


Location: Bovey Tracey, Devon

The job: “Dartmoor National Park Authority is the body that oversees the vibrant, living, working landscape and community that is Dartmoor. We take responsibility for the breath-taking Dartmoor National Park which has inspired novels, music, television, movies and the arts and we take this seriously. Your role will be of key importance to the success of our planning activities and you will be involved in all aspects of our planning work from review and investigation through to hearings and enforcement.

“As the planning officer, you’ll provide advice and guidance on planning-related matters to applicants, agents, the public, authority members and parish/town councils.

“Monitoring developments, you will deal with a range of development management casework. You will investigate and resolve alleged unauthorised developments within the National Park, dealing with the associated development management casework in line with relevant policies, procedures and enforcement codes of practice.”

Wistman's Wood [square]Fun fact: The 3.5 hectare Wistman's Wood in is not only one of the highest oakwood in Britain, but may well be the last fragment of the ancient oakwood covering  Dartmoor that was cleared by Mesolithic hunter gatherers around 5,000BCE.

It's a stunning, haunting habitat. The trees within the wood are mainly pedunculate oak, with occasional rowan, and a very few holly, hawthorn, hazel, and eared-willow. The oaks, unusually, are dwarf trees that rarely grow more than 4.5 metres in vertical height, but take on strange contorted forms, with branches lying on rocks and even the forest floor.

Moreover, the oaks - the oldest of which are 4-500 years old - are covered in dozens of species of epiphytic mosses and lichens. Unsurprisingly, it's both a national nature reserve and a special area of conservation. 

And the name? It's thought to come from he local dialect word 'wisht' meaning eerie or uncanny - which seems about right for such an atmospheric environment.

Find out more and apply

Image credits | Michael715, Shutterstock; iStock; Sue C, Shutterstock; Tomasz Zeglen, Shutterstock; ASC Photography, Shutterstock