Development Officer

Great support has a substantial impact on small environmental charities and the people they benefit. This role will see you support an established, enjoyable, professional development programme for city farms, community gardens and care farms. In London you'll focus on training and showcase events, and nationwide you'll lead on helping organisations achieve the Green Care Quality Mark. The role will suit someone creative, methodical and comfortable with people. The role involves getting out and about, but most of the work is office work. This role does not include any practical gardening or farming activities.

Hours:   Full time days (37.5 hours) per week. Or four days a week (30 hours) if preferred.

Salary:   Starting salary of £31,580 including London Weighting.

Pension: 5% of salary for standard contracted hours after successful completion of a 3-month probation period.

Holiday:  33 days annual leave per year including bank holidays.

Contract: 12 months, subject to passing the three-month probation period. Possibility of an extension.

Location: Option to be based at a shared office space or to work from home. Frequent London travel. The person needs to live in London or be able to travel in regularly.   

Manager:  London Learning and Development Manager 

Start date:   December or January with a paid day of training in December.

There are three elements to the role:

a)    London Development - 3 days a week -
To support the delivery and co-ordination of a programme of targeted training and capacity-building for city farms and community gardens in London to improve their long-term viability, thereby contributing to the sustainability of vibrant local communities throughout the capital. This is a well-established, popular enjoyable programme and you would work closely with the London Development Manager, and SF&Gs members. Annual outputs include:  

·       Training days designed and delivered by SF&G members

·       Networking tours of community growing spaces

·       Showcase events including the London Harvest Festival

b)    Green Care Quality Mark (GCQM) Administration - 1.5 days a week
To support the UK-Wide GCQM programme liaising with our panel of Assessors, assigning applications for review and inputting data into our ‘Civi’ CRM.

The programme helps green care practitioners such as care farms demonstrate to clients, funders, commissioners, referrers and volunteers that they operate a safe, professional and caring place to be. 

The post holder will be responsible for administration and promotion of the GCQM, and supported by managers to retain participants of the scheme, attract new enrolments, and increase the associated earned income for SF&G.

c)     SF&G Membership Support.
A half day a week will be dedicated to supporting SF&Gs UK- wide membership programme through social media, newsletters and database management.  

Ideally the employee would work on both the London programme and the Green Care Quality Mark. If you are only interested in one of these, please get in touch. 

Recruitment Process:

Social Farms & Gardens is an equal opportunities employer that understands that the best employees may not always be the best at job applications or interviews.  We try to make our recruitment processes relatively stress-free.

You do not have to meet all elements of the Person Specification to be considered for the role.

We do not ask for any formal qualifications as not everyone thrives in a school setting.

We would like you to submit these three documents by email:  

•  A CV
• A Personal Statement giving specific examples of your experience for each element of the Person Specification.
• A cover page with personal details
• And complete an Equal Opportunities form, online

We will invite 4 – 8 candidates to an interview. We will provide all questions and tasks in advance. If interviews are really stressful for you, please let us know.

We then offer a paid trial day to the candidate that we would like to offer the role to. This is to make sure the candidate has a good idea of the kind of work involved, and the working environment.

We look forward to hearing from you.