Catchment Resilience Officer (Adur & Ouse)

The Ouse & Adur Rivers Trust (OART) is a registered charity working to protect, restore and
enhance the rivers, streams, estuaries and lakes across the two catchments. Our roots lie
firmly in the local area, and we work closely with communities, business, and partner
organisations to deliver projects focused on improving the environment for both wildlife and
people. A core activity of the Trust is in hosting the Adur & Ouse Catchment Partnership.

The Adur & Ouse Catchment Partnership is a consortium of Government Agencies, Local
Authorities, Business, eNGOs, Academic Institutions and CICs which aims to develop and direct
the principles of integrated catchment management, focusing on issues which require the
committed participation of multiple organisations.

The Role

This role will develop and support the partnerships approach to understanding, and reducing,
our natural habitats vulnerability to climate change. This will consider the critical elements
of both environmental (flood risk, drought, sea level rise, habitat loss and change) and
infrastructure (future housing, water supply, and infrastructure planning) needs. The role will
be focused on establishing an agreed, multi-partner, approach which provides a masterplan for
protecting, enhancing, and connecting our landscape considering the diversity of emerging local
plans, landscape projects, and catchment management planning.

This role will work closely with partners across all sectors and is intended to inspire and
bring together a plan for the delivery of agreed environmental improvements which reduce the
vulnerability of the catchment to climate change and are appealing to the partnership and
external stakeholders.

This will include developing and coordinating structured engagement, initially based on the
outputs from the Natural England Biodiversity and Climate Vulnerability Tool (BCVT – run
externally), to understand and mitigate wider constraints to reducing landscape vulnerability
(e.g. public rights of way, infrastructure, impacts of coastal erosion) and work with partners,
local communities and landholders to identify the potential for future landscape change and
inform on landscape scale objectives.

Main Responsibilities

• Liaise with external consultants using the Natural England BCVT to identify the
  vulnerability of existing priority habitats to climate change whilst integrating spatially
  relevant datasets across broader habitat types.
• Incorporate additional datasets (e.g. flood risk) alongside Partner and local community
  knowledge, to build a robust, data driven output of future vulnerability.
• Work with partners to test different land use change scenarios, assessing the benefits and
  constraints they could present. For example, integration of local plan development boundaries
  to assess increases in vulnerability of site specific and cumulative development.
• Collaborate with partners and wider stakeholders to understand and mitigate wider
  constraints to reducing landscape vulnerability (e.g. public rights of way, infrastructure
  impacts of coastal erosion and sea level rise)
• Work with local communities, organisations, and landholders to identify and agree
  acceptable land use changes which consider the multiple demands on the catchment (e.g.
  landscape resilience, agriculture, public water supply) and could inform on future projects
  such as Landscape Recovery schemes.
• Identify and report on a suite of potential projects which could be developed into
  deliverable action by partners and wider stakeholders, including an overview of potential
  income streams to achieve this.
• Identify gaps within the membership of the Catchment Partnership and seek to inspire new
  members to the group.
• Support the Chair of the Catchment Partnership in the logistics of its operation, including
  the organisation of meetings and reporting to partners.

This job description cannot cover every responsibility or task that may arise within the
post and the post holder will be expected to be able to adapt approaches as the role develops.

Closing date for applications is 28th June with initial interviews undertaken w/c 8th July.