Principal Environment Officer WCC622077

Job Details:

Salary range: £56,436 - £66,084 per annum. Salary negotiable depending upon experience.
Work location: Westminster City Hall, 64 Victoria Street, SW1E 6QP
Hours per week: 36
Contract type: Permanent
Closing date: 14 September 2025
Interview date: Weeks Commencing 29 September 2025 and 6 October 2025

About Us:

THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF GRACE’S PASSION AND DEDICATION

The Environment & Communities Directorate in Westminster City Council is a world of extraordinary stories. Where dedicated people like Grace are using their skills and passion to progress environmental action in the heart of London.

It was at university where Grace first started campaigning for improved recycling facilities, water refill stations, and other eco-friendly initiatives. When she saw the real difference people could make when they came together, she knew she wanted to dedicate her career to community action for the planet.

When she joined us as Principal Engagement Officer, Climate Emergency, she quickly established herself as a passionate advocate for community outreach, engaging various stakeholders across Westminster in the social causes, impacts and solutions to climate change, air pollution, and biodiversity loss.

Grace became a driving force behind our first Citizens’ Climate Assembly, which took place across two weekends in the summer of 2023. Fifty residents were chosen at random from across our diverse communities to come together, learn about the climate emergency, and deliberate how we overcome the barriers to becoming a net zero city by 2040. The assembly produced several recommendations which have informed the evolution of our Climate Emergency Action Plan. Due to the success of this initiative, we’re holding more assemblies to continue community involvement in local decision-making.

To see the work of the Westminster Citizens’ Climate Assembly, click here .

The Role:

As a Principal Environment Officer: Clean Heat you can make your own powerful contribution to Westminster’s greener future. You’ll be working at the heart of our ambitious plan to become a net zero carbon Council by 2030 and achieve net zero for the City of Westminster by 2040. Supporting strategic management, governance and oversight, you’ll act as the lead for clean heat within our climate programme. This means you’ll be integral to resolving some of the most significant challenges facing people today, including the climate emergency itself, supporting greater local energy resilience, promoting the roll-out of low carbon heating infrastructure and ensuring this represents a just transition. More than 80% of Westminster’s emissions stem from the energy used to heat and power buildings, so you stand to make a huge impact on the quality of life in our borough.

Collaborating with council colleagues and a diverse range of external stakeholders, you’ll manage, review and oversee a number of key programmes and interconnecting workstreams and priorities, and help our growing Environment Delivery team progress a number of exciting projects. These include proposed new low-carbon heat networks in Westminster, building our capability in the face of new legislation on heat networks, and working in partnership with King’s College London to help unlock green financing for our net zero project pipeline.

But your work won’t stop here – you’ll also develop a clean heat roadmap that ensures a strategic approach to project delivery across Westminster and other central London authorities, and help to manage the impacts and benefits of heat decarbonisation. Establishing and nurturing relationships with an important range of stakeholders to promote collective and cooperative working towards our climate emergency goal, we’ll also expect you to monitor and evaluate our approach across the programme and provide accurate information that helps to inform positive decision making. Join us and you’ll achieve an enormous amount as you gain the experience to future-proof your career, build your managerial responsibilities and develop a strong track record in climate action and sustainability.

Please refer to the Job Description for more information.

About You:

To be a success in this key role you should be ready to take a fresh perspective on our work, challenge the way we do things, and make positive plans for the future while delivering existing project workstreams. Naturally you’ll have well developed knowledge and experience of clean heat and heat networks, environmental sustainability and climate change issues, and a good awareness of current legislation, policies and best practice. Ideally, you’ll also demonstrate excellent scoping, planning and project management skills, and in addition to a flair for organisation and strategic thinking you’ll be skilled at influencing, advising and building great working relationships with colleagues, councillors and a diverse range of external bodies.

It's important that you have some experience of commercialisation, delivery, investment, financial management and its application to projects, and of delivering great value for money and efficient working practices. We’ll also look for the ability to handle, interpret and use complex information and data to inform decisions, and the confidence to work under pressure and demonstrate sound judgement while prioritising and managing deadlines in a fast-paced working environment.

Ready to act independently, proactively and strategically, manage complex dependencies and set a clear direction for team members and colleagues, you should have a keen political awareness and appreciation of context. And thanks to our agile and flexible approach, you’ll also benefit from a combination of office and home-based working, with some evening and weekend work required to support council meetings and engagement events.

Westminster City Council is committed to supporting Care Leavers into the workplace. Care Leavers seeking their first job and who wish to be considered under our scheme, will automatically be invited to interview should they meet the essential criteria for the role.

The Council is committed to achieving diverse shortlists to support our desire to increase the number of staff from underrepresented groups in our workforce. We especially encourage applications from a Global Majority (GM), people who are Black, Asian, Brown, dual-heritage, indigenous to the global south, and or have been racialised as 'ethnic minorities' (formally known as B.A.M.E , Black, Asian and multiple ethnic) background and, while the role is open to all applicants, we will utilise the positive action provisions of the Equality Act 2010 to appoint a candidate from a global majority background where there is a choice between two candidates of equal merit. If you are from a Global Majority background you can self-declare this to the hiring manager as part of our positive action commitments.

What We Offer:

Westminster is an amazing place. We are home to more than 200,000 residents from all backgrounds, over 50,000 vibrant and vital businesses and three-quarters-of-a-million people work in Westminster. Westminster City Council’s strategy is to work towards a Fairer Westminster. A Fairer Westminster is one in which our communities are at the heart of our decision-making and help to determine the city’s future. By working directly with our communities and other partners, we can build a more inclusive city that celebrates our diverse communities, and where residents, workers and visitors from all backgrounds will feel welcome and safe.  

At Westminster City Council, we pride ourselves on being an inclusive workplace and employer of choice. We encourage and welcome applications from people from all backgrounds and aim to have a workforce that, at all levels, represents the communities we serve. We champion equality, diversity, inclusion and wellbeing and aim to create a workplace where everyone feels valued, has a sense of belonging and is empowered to be their best, that is the Westminster Way. To find out more about how we do this visit 

As a forward-thinking Council we appreciate that people work in different ways, therefore our staff benefit from working a range of flexible working patterns as well as Agile working. 

The Council is a Disability Confident Employer. If you have declared a disability in your application, we guarantee an interview if you meet the essential criteria of the job. If you are invited for interview, you will be asked if you need any reasonable adjustments in order to attend, and we will make these wherever possible. 

We reserve the right to extend or close this vacancy early without warning subject to the volume of suitable applicants.