About the job

Job summary

This position is based nationally

Job description

What we do

We licence, regulate and plan marine activities in the seas around England and Wales so that they're carried out in a sustainable way.

This helps the government achieve its vision for clean, healthy, productive and biologically diverse oceans and seas.

Who we are

We were created by the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 and are now a team of almost 300 people. We combine our Newcastle upon Tyne and London operations with a local presence around the English coastline in North Shields, Scarborough, Grimsby, Lowestoft, Harwich, Hastings, Shoreham, Poole, Portsmouth, Brixham, Plymouth, Penzance, Whitehaven and Preston.

Our responsibilities

We’re responsible for:

• managing and monitoring fishing fleet sizes and quotas for catches
• ensuring compliance with fisheries regulations, such as fishing vessel licences, time at sea and quotas for fish and seafood
• managing funding programmes for fisheries activities
• planning and licensing for marine construction, deposits and dredging that may have an environmental, economic or social impact
• making marine nature conservation byelaws
• dealing with marine pollution emergencies, including oil spills
• helping to prevent illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing worldwide
• producing marine plans to include all marine activities, including those we don’t directly regulate
• enforcing wildlife legislation and issuing wildlife licences

Job description 1 

The primary responsibility of the Marine Licensing Team is to regulate marine licensable activities in English marine and coastal environments. We assess the potential social, environmental and economic impacts of these activities in line with national and international legislation, policy and obligations, using the best available information to make evidence based determinations. Through our work we ensure the activities we regulate are undertaken in a sustainable way, in order to create and maintain clean, healthy, safe and biologically diverse oceans and seas. The team manages and co-ordinates the delivery of marine licensing pre-application, application and post-consent casework, and acts as a consultee to the Planning Inspectorate on Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects. Our work is diverse and we work closely with a range stakeholders to advise and determine marine licensing requirements for developments across multiple sectors, including renewable energy, nuclear, ports and marinas, aggregate dredging, subsea cables, coastal developments, sea defence and wastewater schemes.

As a Case Officer working within the Marine Licensing Team you will be responsible for determining a diverse range of licence applications for activities within our marine area. As you develop your knowledge and experience you will have opportunities to support the training and development of others and the continued improvement of the service.

The team’s work is diverse and you may work on port developments, navigational dredging, coastal defences, nuclear energy or marine renewable energy projects, extraction of aggregates from the seabed, salvage of wrecks and many other activities taking place in the marine area.

You will be responsible for assessing the potential social, environmental and economic impacts of these activities and for drafting reports based on these assessments.

You will also be responsible for drafting licences giving authorisation to activities and for drafting licence conditions to control the activities.

Depending on the individual and case officer roles available you may split your work between casework and provide specific technical advice, participate in casework reviews and deliver training.

You will be responsible for the general administration of your cases. This will include file management, running public consultations on licence applications, handling correspondence and information requests. This will also include preparing briefings for management and government departments.

You will be expected to provide advice to applicants and other parties. This will include attending meetings and teleconferences and may include attending public inquiries and hearings into nationally significant infrastructure projects.

The Marine Licensing service is chargeable and you will be required to record all your time on the MMO’s time recording software in line with guidance.

You will have a passion for the marine sector and be able to develop the skills needed to fulfil the MMO’s role as an enabling regulator. You will understand the importance of the regulatory process and the position of the MMO as a regulator, and effectively deliver fair, open and transparent decision making.

Main Duties and Accountabilities:

• Ensure that you make robust decisions in line with key performance indicators and quality assurance processes
• Marine Licensing Application decisions
• Ensure all casework is dealt with promptly and efficiently using casework tracking systems
• Produce environmental impact assessment screening and scoping opinions
• Undertake technical and environmental assessments: Habitats Regulations, Marine Conservation Zone, Marine Plan Policy
• Work with primary advisers/consultees to draw together relevant legal and/or scientific advice
• Liaise with enforcement officers to ensure that compliance and enforcement activities are carried out in a robust manner
• Ensure that you are engaging effectively and appropriately and that marine licensing is well represented with stakeholders
• Advise applicants and other parties about relevant regulatory frameworks and project-specific issues
• Work with applicants and other parties to resolve complex issues and to enable sustainable development
• Brief senior managers and assist with Freedom of Information and Environmental Information Regulations requests

Essential criteria for these roles:

• Ability to meet the core competencies in the competency profile at this level.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with an ability to adapt to different audiences.
• Ability to interpret legislation/regulations and apply them to a range of practical situations/solutions.
• Capacity to work through complex processes and resolve issues to a satisfactory conclusion.
• Ability to plan, prioritise and control workload to delivering results to agreed timescales.
• Ability to engage with a wide range of internal and external stakeholders.
• Excellent team player who recognises the importance of working relationships within the business who can work in collaboration to develop and maintain effective relationships.

Desirable criteria for these roles:

• A degree in an environmental, science, engineering, planning or marine-related discipline or equivalent applied experience.
• Experience of assessing the potential impacts of marine development.
• Knowledge of marine industries –ports and marinas, marine renewable energy, aggregate extraction etc.
• Experience of dealing with a range of stakeholders.

 FAILURE TO USE THE MMO CV TEMPLATE ATTACHED WILL RESULT IN YOUR APPLICATION NOT BEING SIFTED.

Person specification

Please refer to Job Description

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £27,489, Marine Management Organisation contributes £7,449 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

Things you need to know

Selection process details

Please refer to Job Description

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check. People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window). The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.