Borders Project Officer
| Posting date: | 18 June 2025 |
|---|---|
| Salary: | £32,089 to £32,724 per year |
| Additional salary information: | New entrants to the civil service will be expected to join on the minimum of the pay-band. Normal pay on transfer rules apply for existing civil servants. |
| Hours: | Full time |
| Closing date: | 29 June 2025 |
| Location: | Bristol |
| Company: | Government Recruitment Service |
| Job type: | Temporary |
| Job reference: | 411013/1 |
Summary
The Plant Health Forestry team supports healthy trees, woods and forests, now and in the future. We work together to prevent entry, provide early detection, and minimise impacts of harmful tree pests and diseases, and to ensure traceability of forestry planting material. The unit is geographically dispersed with teams based in Edinburgh, Bristol and London, and individuals based in a variety of other locations. We work with a wide range of partners, stakeholders and customers including other units within the Forestry Commission, Forest Research, Devolved Governments of Wales and Scotland and other government agencies. Also trade and industry bodies and businesses within the sector including importers, processors, forest management companies and landowners.
We are seeking a well-motivated individual with strong organisational skills to assess options for the future shape of border inspections by identifying key data needs, exploring how to gather that data - through real-time measurement or existing sources - and supporting evidence-based comparisons to inform long-term planning. This will inform the development and improvement of our border inspection work and will involve working with subject matter experts to scope and manage projects to achieve defined outcomes, analyse data and make recommendations based on findings, help create guidance for a range of border processes, and develop systems to improve the efficiency of our delivery.
The working environment will be mostly desk-based but you may be required to travel to meetings and occasionally visit select ports.
Responsibilities
- Support the wider review of border inspection delivery through evidence gathering, research and project management. This will involve defining, mapping, tracking, filing and reporting on the project and creating/ maintaining the project documents e.g. RAID log, project plan, project timeline and comms plans
- In collaboration with operational staff, subject matter experts and others in the team, create and improve guidance for a range of border activities including inspections, sampling and manifest system use to check the status of consignments and place holds/ releases
- Update documentation and administrative processes for border inspections following the review of current delivery, working alongside the Business Support, Operational and Policy Teams
- Use intelligence gathered from the Operational Team and published trade data to monitor trade patterns of regulated and unregulated wood and wood products.
- Work with wider team to help develop and implement elements of the wood packaging material monitoring plan
- Work closely with the Business Support Team to help improve and develop their systems and processes in relations to borders work
- Support the Operational Team with back-office functions to deliver their border inspection work, including helping to build relationships with other government agencies and port staff
- Contribute to Plant Health project work and internal systems development, which may include report writing, systems improvements and data management
- Exploring options to facilitate process improvement in relation to imports of regulated wood and wood products at Dover
- Reviewing how inspections are allocated through the firewood Statutory Notification Scheme
- Promote a safety-first culture delivering enhanced safety standards, this will involve reviewing current risk-assessments and working with the Operational Team to update these
Proud member of the Disability Confident employer scheme