The Animal Plant Health Agency (APHA) is an arm’s length body, a government agency that sits within the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. We have one mission, which is to safeguard plant and animal health, for the benefit of everyone in society, the environment, and the economy. – Every one of our employees is passionate about achieving this mission.
The Plant Health Exports & Passporting Lead is responsible for providing technical advice, guidance and direction to colleagues within APHA, Defra, other UK government departments and devolved administrations. Managing a team of experts that are responsible for delivering a technical service to the business, you will work across P&B and policy teams day to day, while contributing to the wider management of APHA and Plant and Bee Health.
Your role will be carried out through the leadership of internal technical groups and liaison with wider governmental bodies, policy and external parties. The ability to work at pace with consistency and accuracy is key. Additionally, the successful candidate must have strong analytical and organisational skills. Individuals need to be self‑motivated, have excellent communication skills, be able to work independently and across teams, often responding to extremely tight deadlines.
The role advertised will involve regular travel to APHA locations and across wider Great Britain. Out of hours and detached duty work may be required in the event of an outbreak or incident. The post‑holder will support an on‑call rota for incident management.
The successful candidate must have practical knowledge of plant exports and plant passporting. They must also be able to work independently within teams and lead people, make key decisions and take responsibility while moving from one task to another as need arises. The role involves presenting through oral or written means new ideas or ways of working. You may be required to respond to emergency situations, make site visits and potentially work outside core hours or travel overseas.
Key focus for this role is:
* Oversee the operational requirement for the export of goods, including the monitoring of international legislation for meeting the trade of goods under plant health and horticultural marketing.
* Ensure appropriate working groups are advised on new aspects of trade agreements which may affect plant passporting or plant exports. This may include closer alignment with the EU while maintaining operational and technical support for exports to the rest of the world.
* Be responsible for engaging with, advising and providing data for fees and charges across plant passporting, plant health exports and other new activities as they become chargeable.
* Monitor and report on operational delivery, using analytical skills to assess data, identify issues and develop or propose sound business decisions.
* Work with IT project teams to develop agile systems which improve business process.
* Provide training and monitor performance with operational teams.
* Lead APHA’s Technical Advice Panels (TAPs) covering export and plant passporting to ensure internal and external advice is up to date and that internal training for staff is current.
* Line manage staff.
* Liaise with Defra international, technical and policy teams (plant health risk group, subgroups and market access working group), along with the Forestry Commission, devolved governments and Crown Dependencies on new or changes to policy, fees and legislation across plant health.
* Liaise, engage, share and work with FERA Science on plant health matters.
* Help identify management information for monitoring future work.
* Develop and lead continuous improvement and quality initiatives for exports, working with other APHA groups, with an emphasis on achieving ISO 17020 for plant health exports and maintaining it for plant passporting.
* Co‑develop and deliver training materials and create ways to monitor learning outputs with technical leads.
* Produce, maintain and develop stakeholder content, including publishing APHA plant passporting updates to trade several times a year.
* For HMI marketing standards and export activities, ensure appropriate dialogue with subject leads to deliver certificates of conformity for relevant controlled goods.
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