Job Specifications
Job Summary
This role is for a leader who is committed to making change stick and demonstrating the results.
As Head of Change and Impact, you will guide the strategic delivery of innovation, AI, and change initiatives across the organisation, working collaboratively with service owners and senior stakeholders to enhance service delivery and operational performance. You will ensure that change is co-designed with service users, frontline teams, and operational leaders, building credibility and momentum where it matters most.
You will also embed discipline around impact: defining clear benefits, tracking delivery, and ensuring improvements are measured, evidenced, and sustained over time. As a senior member of the Office of the Chief Digital and Information Officer, you will help strengthen organisational capability by developing project delivery and change‑management maturity, and by supporting continuous improvement across services and teams.
Job Description
We are looking for a credible change leader with a strong track record of delivering complex change, innovation or transformation in operational or service-delivery environments.
You will bring the ability to lead across a diverse portfolio, working confidently with senior leaders, service owners and multidisciplinary teams to translate strategy into clear, deliverable plans.
You will understand how to embed change so that improvements are not only delivered but adopted, sustained and measured, with a strong grasp of benefits realisation and impact.
Experience spanning digital, data and non-digital change is essential, alongside the ability to prioritise effectively and maintain momentum in a complex and evolving landscape.
Just as important is how you lead. You will be purpose-driven, motivated by improving public services and outcomes rather than simply delivering outputs. You will bring a proactive, resilient and collaborative, anticipating challenges, taking ownership, and building trust through inclusive ways of working and co-design.
As an inspirational leader, you will set clear direction, empower others and role-model continuous improvement. You will be curious and reflective, open to learning and experimentation, and a pragmatic problem solver who balances ambition with realism to make progress even in uncertain or imperfect conditions.
A typical week in this role is varied and outward facing. You will spend time working with service owners and senior leaders to shape and progress change and innovation initiatives, ensuring they are aligned to organisational priorities and focused on real impact.
You will lead discussions on benefits and outcomes, unblock issues, and help teams turn ambition into delivery.
Alongside this, you’ll balance strategic thinking with hands-on leadership, developing change capability, mentoring senior colleagues, and championing inclusive, user centred ways of working. No two weeks look the same, but the constant is a focus on making change stick and improving how services perform for the people who use them.
Salary
New entrants to the Civil Service are expected to start on the minimum of the pay band. Internal rules apply to existing Civil Servants, i.e. level transfers move on current salary or the pay range minimum, transfers on promotion move to new pay range minimum or receive 10% increase. Either case is determined by whichever is the highest
Working Hours
Standard working week is 37 hours, flexible working hours policy available
Part time at 25 hours or above, flexible working hours policy available.
The Planning Inspectorate has a long and proud history in ensuring a fair planning system for England. The work we do has a significant impact on people’s lives, the communities where they live and the economy.
We want our colleagues to be able to work more flexibly and more collaboratively, exploring new and innovative ways to improve the way we provide services.
For further information on the Planning Inspectorate, please visit our careers page at Civil Service Careers
Office Attendance
This role is contractually based in Bristol, 10 minute walk from Temple Meads train station. We recognise and value the mutual benefits of hybrid working and have a flexible approach to in person attendance, which can vary dependent on the requirements of individual business units - the details of which can be discussed with candidates if invited to attend an interview.
Person specification
Essential Criteria
Proven experience leading and delivering a wide range of digital and non-digital innovation projects, change and benefits realisation that deliver tangible results in service delivery or operational environments.
Excellent understanding of Innovation and Change processes, service design, user-centred change, and performance improvement.
Experience of building effective and supportive relationships within teams across the organisation and with stakeholders internally and externally.
Effective skills i
About the Company
The Planning Inspectorate deals with planning appeals, national infrastructure planning applications, examinations of local plans and other planning-related and specialist casework in England. Our purpose is to make decisions and provide recommendations and advice on a range of land use planning-related issues across England. We do this in a fair, open, impartial and timely way. The Planning Inspectorate is an executive agency, sponsored by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities . Follow us on Twitter: http...
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