Job Profile: Countryside Manager

Name: Jon Lewney

an engaging speaker surrounded by people dressed in wet weather gear in a wood — Jon engaging people in a talk (Carl Hawke)

Employer: National Trust

Location: Calke Abbey Leicestershire portfolio

sheep and lambs with horns bunched together — (Jon Lewney)

Job Responsibilities: Creating strategy for the portfolio to align with the organisation's People and Nature thriving goals, delivering nature restoration and supporting partners to deliver.

Overall responsibility for our in hand livestock, veteran trees, SSSIs and National Nature Reserve.

Building and maintaining active partnerships to deliver for nature and people. I input into property leadership and regional restore nature teams. I work weekends as senior lead supporting the full range of property operations.

Majority of time is spent networking, people management and compliance checks. Time is spent mainly indoors with around 30% outdoors, walking meetings, prospecting, and networking.

There are more events and gatherings during spring, summer and autumn. There are different challenges during different times of the year for delivery of work on the ground, a presence is required during lambing and hay making.

a stag with large antlers on grassland, trees in the background — (Jon Lewney)

Qualifications needed:

A countryside management qualification is useful, experience managing teams, projects and budgets and an appetite for delivering large scale works.

Additional training: Project management.

Skills needed: Open attitude, resilience, negotiating skills. Being able to delegate and allow others to deliver.

Advice to anyone looking at similar roles:

This is a far more satisfying role than it appears in comparison to the team delivering on the ground, it can appear quite office based, but the opportunity to be part of much bigger wins for nature whilst developing new relationships, can lead to some inspiring places. Resilience is key, not all the things dreamt up will work out or get funding. Working up multiple strands, phasing works into bitesize chunks to complete a bigger picture vision.

If you have any queries about this role or would like to ask a question of the job holder please contact CJS by email.

Find all the articles in the CJS Focus on...Countryside Management Series here

Post Type: Job Profile