Join us

As our Head of Learning & Development, you will lead and develop our career transition courses and professional CPDs, providing expert facilitation and support to help built environment practitioners thrive within the public sector.

You will have the opportunity to:

• Design and deliver impactful learning experiences that have a meaningful impact on individuals as they transition their careers.
• Manage a network of expert built environment practitioners who will help deliver training and CPDs.
• Directly support local governments in improving their ways of working through consultancy and workshops.

This is an important senior part-time role in our company as we expand our services. You’ll collaborate with various colleagues across the company, working closely to support our Project Coordinator with our Associate Programme and our COO, who leads our consultancy in particular.

Deliver our Associate Course - (25%)

You will be responsible for organising and delivering our Associate course for built environment practitioners, most of whom will be working in the public sector for the first time through our Associate Programme. Through the Friday course days and additional supporting materials, you will ensure that the learning objectives are achieved and that the quality of the learning experience is high.

Lead our Short Courses and CPDs - (25%)

You will manage and develop our network of faculty experts from public, private, and third sectors. Working with these technical experts you will design and deliver unique short courses and CPD content for a range of participants from different sectors.

Facilitate workshops with public sector teams - (20%)

You will support our growing consultancy work by designing and facilitating workshops tailored to uncover challenges and opportunities within public sector teams. Helping teams explore and improve their ways of working through exercises and discussions.

Develop new network learning experiences - (20%)

As we develop new programmes and partnerships, you will create new learning journeys and courses for specific groups of people, such as early career professionals, senior leaders, or those collaborating across the public sector.

Core, team and professional development activities will cover the other 10% of your time.

We are looking for someone who is passionate about learning and facilitation and wants to use their own experiences to support professionals transitioning into public sector placemaking careers.

This is a great opportunity for someone who enjoys designing and delivering workshops, developing learning programmes, and fostering networks of like-minded individuals.

As our new Head of Learning and Development, you will be confident in your facilitation skills, highly organised, and motivated by the chance to make a difference in how local governments deliver better places. You will relish working collaboratively, taking initiative, and producing high-quality inclusive experiences.

We care about what you can do now and how quickly you can learn. It doesn’t matter how you got here (which is why we don’t ask for CVs, degrees or educational background). For this role, we are specifically looking to see the following skills and attributes and will be assessing all candidates based on the following six core skills.

In addition to these attributes, please note only applicants who have the right to work in the UK can be considered for this role. As a small business, we cannot support visa sponsorships.

Due to the nature of the role, candidates must be able to work on Fridays (to be able to deliver the Associate Course). Ideally, the working days would be either:

• Monday (in office), Thursday, Friday
• Tuesday, Wednesday (in office), Friday
• Wednesday (in office), Thursday, Friday

We would also be open to considering someone who can only commit to two days a week or other similar flexible working requests.

Currently, we provide all employees with the following:

• We operate under a 9-Day-Fortnight working policy for ten of the twelve months of the year.
• 2 days of office access per week at the co-working office Better Space, London, of which we require a minimum of one day in the office per week for those working part-time, two days for those working full-time.
• Regular team away days and team lunches.
• 27 days of holiday per year (excluding bank holidays).
• A flexible and remote working policy that allows employees to work from abroad for two months of the year (in August and December).
• Provide a 5% employer’s pension contribution.
• Enhanced sick, maternity, paternity and adoption leave.
• £600 annual training budget and up to four professional development days a year.
• Employee perks budget provided by With Juno monthly.

Our hiring process assesses a candidate's ability to meet the attributes we think are necessary for someone to do well in the role; you will see these listed clearly in each job advert. We are also interested in a candidate's motivation and interest in working at Public Practice and in a small company team. We do not review CVs or a candidate's educational background when making hiring decisions.

We remove as much bias as possible during our hiring process, and candidates remain anonymous to all assessors until Stage Two and are all marked against pre-set criteria. We also aim to collect and provide as much feedback as possible to all applicants at each process stage.

Although we know that AI detectors are unreliable and have their own challenges, we use this software to help flag the likelihood of heavily generated content and encourage applicants to ensure their responses are original.

If you would like to speak to the COO about this role and whether it could be the right fit for you, or if you have any specific access adjustment needs we haven’t addressed:

• There are several 10-minute call slots available during the advert period on a first-come-first-serve basis.
• If you prefer to email your questions directly, email us at work@publicpractice.org.uk, and we will aim to respond within 48 hours (although please note the office will close from the 19 December for the winter break).
• If you have a question about this role but want to remain anonymous, we’ve created an anonymous question form, open till 6 January with our answers being shared openly across our social channels soon after.

We try to make our hiring process as inclusive and accessible as we can; this includes providing everyone with:

• The themes of each interview question will be provided in advance to everyone
• Closed captions are always on for online interviews
• We deliver all questions in written as well as verbal format
• Offer as many different interview times as possible to work around work, caring and religious commitments you may have
• If attending an in-person interview, the venue is fully wheelchair accessible and we offer a space before an after in a quiet area

When completing your application, you will be asked if you would like any additional access adjustments we offer or would like something not listed that you would value.

The first stage of the application process asks candidates to answer five questions, which will then be scored anonymously by Public Practice colleagues. The online form also asks for some additional information to be submitted. This data will not be shared with those assessing your application. The five questions are:

1. Why do you want to work for Public Practice?
2. What motivates you to apply for the role of Head of Learning & Development at this point in your career?
3. Can you share an example of when you brought together people from diverse professional backgrounds to collaborate or exchange knowledge? How did you approach fostering connections, and what did you find the most challenging aspect?
4. Can you provide a specific example of when you used active listening to help someone overcome a career or workplace challenge? What steps did you take, and how did your approach contribute to the outcome?
5. What do you see as one of the key challenges of working in local government, and how has your experience or knowledge shaped your perspective?

Whilst we are looking for a candidate who can utilise the latest tools and software to create high-quality work and content, when it comes to our hiring process, it is important for us to be able to get to know candidates and assess their skills and motivations.

We strongly recommend that candidates who may use software to help check the grammar and structure of their answers also ensure that AI software and support does not inadvertently turn answers into generic responses or remove your tone and authenticity.

Be aware that when assessors review applications, they will compare them to examples produced by AI.