Your new role
As a Public Affairs Manager you are responsible for developing and delivering our public affairs strategy and regional engagement programme to enable us to better connect with key stakeholders across the Midlands and East region. This is a fixed term contract until end of December 2021 and you will join a small, established team of public affairs professionals and work in an integrated way with regional communications functions. You will work closely with senior leaders in the region to provide trusted public affairs advice on a range of issues. Highways England operates across the country and therefore you will be required to undertake some regional and national travel to attend events and meetings.
This role has the flexibility to be based from any of our National offices, with flexibility to work remotely but will require regular travel to cover the Midlands and East regions, subject to COVID-19 guidelines.
What you’ll be leading on
- Supporting the delivery of Highways England’s public affairs strategy;
- Developing and delivering a regional public affairs programme that builds familiarity with and support for Highways England and its work;
- Supporting senior leaders and regional teams in their stakeholder engagement activity;
- Monitoring the external stakeholder environment to bring actionable intelligence into the business;
- Delivering regional parliamentary engagement activity, including our regular surgeries for Members of Parliament;
- Providing trusted advice to our regional leadership teams.
To be successful
You will:
- Be an experienced public affairs professional with an excellent working knowledge of government and parliament, or have transferable skills and a demonstrable interest in public affairs;
- Have strong oral and written communication skills with an ability to bring clarity to complex issues;
- Be strategic and astute – able to see the bigger picture but with a real eye for detail;
- Have experience of dealing comfortably, confidently and discretely with senior stakeholders;
- Be organised and flexible, with an aptitude for dealing with changing and competing demands at short notice;
- Be driven, ambitious and able to work with high levels of autonomy;
- Ideally have a good knowledge of the national and regional political and stakeholder landscape.
A bit about us
The Corporate Affairs and Communications Directorate is responsible for building and maintaining a robust and positive reputation for Highways England with all its audiences. The Directorate includes a full range of communications disciplines which provide support to the business including media relations, public relations, stakeholder engagement, creative, digital, marketing and internal communications.