Closing Date
2025-07-20
Job Title: Environmental Permitting Lead
Location: Sussex
Contract Type: Permanent
Hours: 37/ week
Salary: £44,000 - £48,000
There has never been a better time to join our organisation as we build towards a greener future, tackling climate change, minimising our environmental impact and reducing our carbon footprint!
Job Overview
In this role, you will ensure the business has all the necessary environmental permits, consents and licences in place to facilitate the legal operation of Southern Water's wastewater and water supply discharge activities to protect the company's regulatory position.
You will ensure permits have been negotiated to deliver appropriate business benefit.
Day to day you will be:
• Acting as the principal environmental permitting interface with the Environment Agency and Natural England; ensuring that permits have been negotiated to deliver appropriate business benefit.
• Negotiating & securing all necessary environmental permits, consents & licences to enable Southern Water to deliver its AMP capital programme and manage its wastewater activities.
• Taking responsibility for ensuring any new permit conditions are made visible to the business.
• Taking ownership and accountability both internally and externally for issues relating to wastewater and water supply permitting activities.
• Providing permit expertise & advice to the business.
• Representing Southern Water at regional and national meetings on permitting matters with regulators and Water UK, as required.
• Responsible for ensuring any new permit conditions are made visible to the business by updating the company's permit management system (CALMs).
• Responsible for preparing appeals against unacceptable permit conditions for submission to the Planning Inspectorate and managing appeal resolution with the Planning Inspectorate and EA.
About You
To be suitable for this role, you will have experience of permit negotiation and liaising with regulatory bodies, ideally in the water industry.
You must have:
• Good negotiating skills
• Strong communication skills, able to deal with stakeholders at different levels within the organisation and work with external parties.
• Experience of liaison and negotiation with environmental regulators
• The ability to assimilate and simplify complex regulatory issues
• Excellent verbal reasoning skills
• Numerate with competent IT skills
Ideally you will have:
• An environmental degree, preferably with Chartership or a higher degree
• Experience of the water industry or environmental sector, with a significant proportion of this in the wastewater and waste arena
Package
This role will be full time Monday to Friday with a flexible hybrid approach to working between our Sussex based sites and home.
We are offering a salary up to £48,000 per annum depending on skills and experience as well as other benefits including:
• Generous pension up to 11% company contribution
• 25 days annual leave
• Life assurance equal to 4x salary
• Salary sacrifice electric car scheme (after 6 months service)
• Health Cash Plan
• Full funded eye tests
• Two paid volunteering days a year
• Occupational health service
• Discounts with over 800 popular retailers
• Digital GP service
• Study support may be available for job-related qualifications
• Competitive maternity leave and flexible return to work options
• Cycle to work scheme
Join our Environmental Permitting team and see how far your career could progress with a company committed to career progression, training and development opportunities, our customers and the environment.
Does this opportunity excite you but you're not 100% sure if you meet all the requirements for the role? Or are you concerned that 'normal' office hours aren't possible given your personal circumstances? Whilst we can't accommodate every flexible working request, we'll try to find a practical solution. So why not engage with us and find out more about this role?
If this role isn't quite what you're looking for but are keen to be contacted about opportunities at Southern Water, you can register your details here: Introduce Yourself (myworkdaysite.com)
Our customers are at the heart of everything we do, because delivering water for life is our core purpose. To achieve this, we need 24/7 support in place to resolve incidents quickly and efficiently. All our employees understand the importance of out-of-hours incident support - because when problems appear, fixing them is our top priority. That's why our people join together and support when and however needed to make sure our customers get the service they deserve. Joining the Southern Water family means you'll become part of our incident support team. During your interview, your manager will speak to you about any incident support rotas that apply to your position.
Privacy Statement:
Please note: If you are an existing Southern Water employee, you will need to confirm within your application that your Manager is aware of your application.
All applicants must be eligible to live and work in the UK. You will need to provide evidence of eligibility (e.g. a passport or long birth certificate and proof of NI) and current proof of address (dated within the last 3 months), will be required as part of the recruitment process. If you do not meet these criteria, your application will not be considered.
#LI-AW1
#LI-Hybrid #J-18808-Ljbffr