Post Title: Marine Advisor – Cross-team  

Teams: Marine Monitoring, Marine Evidence, Marine Protected Areas, Marine Ecosystems, Marine Species & Marine Management         

Ref No: 2023-87/88/89

Grade: H

Type of appointment: Permanent

Location: Peterborough or Aberdeen

Salary:  £28,958 (please note a pay award is pending so this figure is expected to increase)                                      

These posts will have a base in either Peterborough or Aberdeen. You will be offered a permanent contract of employment, initially working across a cluster of our Marine teams, to provide you with a broad range of skills and experience, with the expectation that you will move into a team-specific specialist role within the first 12 months – see details below.

JNCC has adopted a hybrid working approach, allowing colleagues to benefit from time in one of our offices (currently Peterborough and Aberdeen), with the flexibility to also work from home. Employees are expected to work from an office base for 1 – 2 days a month as a minimum. This will vary by team and the exact balance will depend on the nature of your role.

Who are JNCC?

Looking for an opportunity to help turn science into action for nature, people and the planet? Then JNCC is the employer for you.                                        

Established in 1991, we’re the UK’s statutory advisor on issues affecting the natural environment across the UK and internationally. Our primary role is advising all four Governments of the UK. We also work with private sector organisations to support decision making on the sustainable use of marine waters and natural resources around the UK. JNCC is led by the Joint Committee, which brings together members from the nature conservation bodies for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and independent members appointed by the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs under an independent Chair. Support is provided to the Committee by almost 300 people who bring together scientific and technical expertise, extensive knowledge of policy at global, European and national levels, and skills in working with other organisations.

Why JNCC?

We’re small enough that your voice is heard by everyone including the CEO, but big enough that we have all the skills, resources and people you’ll need to get the job done. All our staff are passionate about conservation and making a difference to the world we live in. We have a very flexible, inclusive and welcoming organisational culture. Our Executive Management provides employees with the freedom and tools you will need, and our friendly teams will assist you in your role. JNCC is committed to maintaining employee health and wellbeing, whether it is physically, emotionally, financially or socially, and offers a range of benefits to support employees in this. Such benefits include the option to join the Civil Service Pension Scheme (with an average employer contribution of 27% of your annual salary), professional and personal development opportunities as well as an exciting job in a unique environment.

Hours of work:                     Full-time

Normal minimum hours of attendance for the post are 36 hours per week over a 5-day period, Monday to Friday.

As well as operating a hybrid model of working and offering family-friendly opportunities, all staff at JNCC can work flexibly within the hours of 7am-7pm.

Annual Leave:

The annual leave allowance is 25 days per year, rising to 30 days per year after 5 years’ service. There are also 12 days public and privilege leave. Part-time staff will receive this on a pro rata basis.

Short Summary:

JNCC is the statutory adviser to Government on UK and international nature conservation. ln using our advisory responsibilities, JNCC supports governments in achieving their vision of clean, healthy, safe, productive and biologically diverse oceans and seas through piloting and demonstrating improved use of evidence and analysis in decision making.

Our Marine teams at JNCC have a diverse and exciting work portfolio spanning both national and international areas of work. Annex A gives more information about the work of each team.

If you are successful in being appointed to one of these Marine Advisor – Cross-team posts, you will be offered a permanent contract of employment, initially working across a cluster of our Marine teams, providing you the opportunity to develop a broad range of skills and experience, whilst building further cross-team cohesion in the Marine Directorate at JNCC. Within your first year at JNCC, your line manager will work with you closely to help you identify which specialist team (or teams) would most suit your strengths and interests, with the expectation that you will move into a specialist marine advisor role within the first 12 months (the exact timing of this move will depend on vacancy availability).

The team clusters that you may work across are as follows:

Cluster 1: Marine Monitoring, Marine Evidence & Marine Ecosystems Teams

Cluster 2: Marine Species & Marine Management Teams

Cluster 3: Marine Protected Area (MPA) and Marine Management Teams

Appointment offers to each team cluster will be based on an assessment of the ‘specialisms’ that you demonstrate and evidence through your application form and at interview.

Job Description:

All three posts will be expected to undertake the broad set of duties set out below:

• Provide specialist policy-relevant scientific advice to internal and external customers.
• Effectively communicate JNCC’s marine work across a range of channels to generate meaningful impact.
• Support, and as opportunity arises lead, the management of contracts, including procurement (specification, tendering and letting contracts, with support from our procurement specialists).
• Provision of technical secretariat roles for internal and/or external working groups.
• Organise events such as meetings, workshops and webinars for internal or external participants; includes planning, logistics, facilitation and reporting.

Within each team cluster, the task list associated with each post will depend on prevailing business need and may include the following:

Cluster 1: Marine Monitoring, Marine Evidence & Marine Ecosystems teams.

• Leading on the planning of marine environmental benthic surveys and the production of monitoring reports, including the interpretation of survey data to determine presence and map the extent of protected area features in MPAs;
• Leading on R&D of monitoring tools and techniques to provide best practice guidance;
• Analysing marine environmental data using a range of statistical techniques to support marine monitoring reporting and habitat classification development;
• Supporting the development of indicators to assess the status of the marine environment;
• Natural capital: compiling, collating and analysing evidence linking ecosystems to services for human beneficiaries and their values; and
• Acting as a strategic link between the Marine Monitoring, Marine Evidence and Marine Ecosystems Teams to improve cohesion in cross-team working.

Cluster 2: Marine Management & Marine Species teams

• Working with JNCC colleagues and country agency staff to provide advice to Government(s) on issues relating to the conservation of seabirds and marine mammals;
• Supporting the delivery of seabird monitoring schemes and the production of marine species conservation status assessments and other reports;
• Participating in seabird survey and research projects, including opportunities for survey work, data management and analysis, and reporting;
• Organising project and/or partnership meetings and events, providing secretariat functions where these are necessary, and producing papers and giving presentations when appropriate;
• Working with staff across both the Marine Management and Species Teams to identify opportunities to develop new work and supporting preparation of project specifications and bids; and
• Acting as a strategic link between the Marine Management & Marine Species Teams to improve cohesion in cross-team working.

Cluster 3: Marine Protected Areas and Marine Management teams.

• Supporting the development of fisheries measures for UK Marine Protected Areas and Highly Protected Marine Areas;
• In the context of ambitious Government policies including Net Zero and Nature Recovery, supporting further development of JNCC’s advice provision around MPAs and increasing pressures from offshore development of industries such as offshore renewables, subsea cabling and decommissioning;  
• Supporting responses to consultations on the environmental impacts of proposed marine activities on the UK offshore marine environment;
• Piloting and developing approaches to integrate climate change considerations into the advice we provide to our customers;
• Considering ways in which we might assess the effectiveness of management on the condition of MPAs; and
• Acting as a strategic link between the MPA, Marine Species and Marine Management Teams to improve cohesion in cross-team working.

Technical

For all three roles, to be a successful candidate you will be:

• Educated to degree level or equivalent qualification in a relevant subject and/or relevant recent practical work experience that provides the following knowledge, experience and behaviours.   

Experience (Responsibilities)

To be a successful candidate you will need to have the following experience across one of three of the specialist areas. You may use the applications process to express interest in more than one of the specialist areas, but you must provide evidence as to how you meet that experience:

Cluster 1: Marine Monitoring, Marine Evidence & Marine Ecosystems teams.

• Knowledge of the UK’s benthic marine biodiversity and its spatial and temporal variation and a working knowledge of the national and/or EUNIS marine habitat classification system.
• Knowledge of undertaking marine biological survey of the seabed, such as knowledge of remote-sensing, sampling or in-situ marine survey techniques and data processing.
• Experience in the use of statistical programmes, databases, and GIS to analyse, interpret and recognise patterns and trends in data to draw key conclusions, and display different types of data on marine habitats and species from different sources. Practical experience using and writing scripts in programming languages such as R or Python for data manipulation and analysis.

Cluster 2: Marine Management & Marine Species teams:

• Knowledge of marine conservation issues, particularly the impacts of offshore marine industries on offshore habitats and species and the ways in which these impacts may be mitigated and managed.
• A good knowledge of UK marine fisheries and associated impacts on marine habitats and species.
• A good knowledge of the ecology of marine birds or marine mammals, and the main provisions of UK/international marine conservation policy related to them.

Cluster 3: Marine Protected Areas and Marine Management teams:

• Knowledge of the UK’s work and progress on Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), including associated policy drivers and underpinning obligations.
• Knowledge of marine conservation issues, particularly the impacts of offshore marine industries on offshore habitats and species and the ways in which these impacts may be mitigated and managed.
• Knowledge of legislation relating to the management of offshore industries and Marine Protected Areas in UK waters.

Behaviours

Candidates for all three roles must additionally demonstrate how they meet the following behaviours:

• Working Together
• Delivering at Pace
• Making Effective Decisions
• Communicating and Influencing

In the event that we receive a large volume of applications we reserve the right to conduct the sift based on the Lead Behaviour of Working Together

Please see the CS Behaviours framework for more details and examples of behaviours at this grade:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/717275/CS_Behaviours_2018.pdf

Closing date and interview date

The closing date for this post is 23:55 on Sunday, 24 September 2023

The anticipated interview dates are the week commencing Monday, 30 October 2023

How to apply: https://www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/index.cgi

 

Annex A: Summary of Marine Teams at JNCC

 

The following provides a brief overview of the work of each of our marine teams at JNCC:

Marine Monitoring Team

• Organising offshore seabed surveys to gather additional information to support designation, monitoring and assessment of offshore Marine Protected Areas (MPAs);
• Research and development of standards, guidelines and methods at a UK and international level to support high quality data management and marine survey;
• Support coordination of the UK Marine Monitoring Programme working under the UK Marine Monitoring and Assessment Strategy with other partners through the Healthy and Biologically Diverse Seas Evidence Group; and
• Provision of expert advice to national and international fora, including the UK Marine Monitoring and Assessment Strategy, the OSPAR commission, ICES working groups (e.g. Benthic Ecology) and the Marine Environmental Data and Information Network.

Marine Evidence Team

 

• Enhancing our understanding of the marine environment through fine-scale and broad-scale marine habitat mapping (www.emodnet-seabedhabitats.eu) and their relationships to physical and oceanographic parameters;
• Understanding human impacts on the marine environment through spatial mapping of human activity footprints and their pressures and the assessment of habitat and species sensitivity;
• Maintenance of the national benthic marine database (Marine Recorder) (https://jncc.gov.uk/our-work/marine-recorder/), the national marine habitat classification (https://jncc.gov.uk/our-work/marine-habitat-classification/) and UK-level statistics relating to Marine Protected Areas for reporting purposes (https://jncc.gov.uk/our-work/uk-marine-protected-area-network-statistics/); and
• Provision of expert advice to international fora, including the European Environment Agency (such as for the EUNIS habitat classification), the OSPAR Commission (e.g. Biodiversity Committee), and via ICES (e.g. Working Group on Marine Habitat Mapping and relevant workshops).

Marine Management Team

• Provision of advice to Government and regulators on the impacts of fishing on the marine environment;
• Supporting future fisheries policy including supporting the development of fisheries management measures in MPAs;
• Supporting international fisheries advice work;
• Provision of evidence-based advice on the environmental impacts of offshore industry activities (including renewables, oil and gas, aggregate extraction and cabling) on marine habitats and species to regulators, industry representatives and other stakeholders;
• Providing nature conservation advice in an on-call capacity in the event of marine pollution incidents (for which there are on-call allowance payments); and
• Supporting strategic research to underpin evidence gaps to support advice provision.

Marine Species Team

• Provision of advice to Government and regulators on the conservation of marine species, notably seabirds and marine mammals;
• Working with partners to collect evidence and assess status to help meet domestic and international environmental reporting obligations for marine species, including marine mammals and seabirds;
• Supporting the management of Marine Protected Areas for mobile species in UK waters; and
• Providing evidence-based advice on the impacts of industry activities on seabirds and on the measures required to mitigate such impacts throughout UK waters.

Marine Ecosystems Team

• Developing and implementing modelling tools, metrics, and indicators to measure the condition, health and trends in marine ecosystems and ecosystem services to support implementation of management measures, and the production of national and international assessments;

• Providing scientific advice and developing methods to measure the impacts from climate change and ocean acidification;
• Supporting advice and evidence products to develop and promote sustainable blue economy and finance initiatives;

• Developing marine natural capital evidence to support environmental decision making;

• Providing scientific advice and evidence to Governments in their response to reporting requirements under a range of Multilateral Environmental Agreements, such as OSPAR and the Convention on Biological Diversity; and
• Delivering advice and scientific tools for the assessment of condition of MPAs.

Marine Protected Areas Team

• Advising UK Government and the Devolved Administrations on designating Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and Highly Protected Marine Areas (HPMAs) in their waters;
• Supporting other teams and external partners in the management, monitoring and assessment of UK MPAs;
• Representing the UK at external meetings and international fora on topics relating to MPAs; andSupporting our work to export our domestic expertise internationally under the Ocean Country Partnership Programme; a Defra-led programme of technical assistance for which MPAs forms a key component with JNCC as a key delivery partner.