Assistant Communications Officer
| Posting date: | 19 September 2025 |
|---|---|
| Salary: | £29,715 to £34,435 per year |
| Additional salary information: | National: £29,715-£30,705. London: £33,350-£34,435. For details of our pay on appointment policy, please see below under the heading ‘Salary’. |
| Hours: | Full time |
| Closing date: | 02 October 2025 |
| Location: | London |
| Company: | Government Recruitment Service |
| Job type: | Permanent |
| Job reference: | 428446/2 |
Summary
Local Communications teams plan, deliver and evaluate strategic communications activity to help Defra, the Environment Agency, and Natural England deliver their organisational priorities. They also help to identify, plan for, and respond to incidents and high-risk reputational issues such as flooding, pollution, and disease outbreaks.
Local communications teams work closely with operational delivery teams and other specialist communications teams to advise on, plan, and deliver communications activities that support behaviour change, warning and informing. Our teams manage reputation through our newsdesk that deals with live media enquiries.
You will need to be able to develop good relationships with a wide range of staff and be a strong communicator. You'll be confident working across a range of channels and have experience in handling multiple streams of work simultaneously. You’ll also have a passion for evaluation and be able to utilise evaluation tools to gather data and insights to support the team in showcasing the work we deliver.
- Assisting with the creation and delivery of multi-channel communications plans across media, stakeholders and multiple channels, working with policy, operational and external delivery colleagues.
- Supporting the evaluation of our communications to help us continually improve how we communicate with our target audiences.
- Working with teams and external partners to create accurate and engaging content — news articles, op-eds, blogs and social media content such as graphics, videos, imagery — and repurposing this across a variety of channels.
- Using digital and AI tools to provide issue monitoring, reporting and rebuttal advice to Defra and the arm’s-length bodies (ALBs) Group Communications support.
- Developing close working relationships within the wider communications team and key stakeholders across the business.
- Contributing to a forward planner to support planning for key communications milestones.
- Protecting and enhancing the reputation of Defra group by supporting colleagues with horizon scanning, issues management and internal communications.
- Contributing to incident response communications rotas, including out of hours, delivering timely warning and informing messaging and public information to act.
Proud member of the Disability Confident employer scheme