Senior Evidence and Analysis Officer

Reference:

Closing date:         12:00pm noon, Friday 27^th March 2020

Location:               Flexible across the North of England, but with a requirement to regularly work from our office in Manchester

Salary:                  £39,331 - £48,690

Contract:               Full Time, Permanent

Attachments:        See Role Profile

Transport for the North (TfN) is England’s first Sub-national Transport Body. We were formed to transform the transport system across the North of England, providing the infrastructure needed to drive economic growth.

We bring together the North’s twenty local transport authorities and business leaders together with Network Rail, Highways England, and HS2 Ltd and working with Central Government. We enable the North to speak with one voice on the transport infrastructure investment needed to drive transformational growth and rebalance the UK economy.

Our role is to add strategic value by ensuring that funding and strategy decisions about transport in the North are informed by local knowledge and requirements. This fits with the devolution agenda and we draw powers down from central government rather than up from local government.

Our vision is of a thriving North of England, where modern transport connections drive economic growth and support an excellent quality of life.

TfN is looking to recruit the following role:

The economic research and analysis team is responsible for the research and evidence behind Transport for the North’s Strategic Transport Plan and a range of transformational transport schemes including Northern Powerhouse Rail. The team works closely with the strategy and policy team to ensure that TfN Policy development is underpinned analyse and appraise different transport schemes to determine the most appropriate interventions for TfN’s long term investment programme.

The team’s work focuses on demonstrating how improving connectivity across the North of England can drive the improved productivity, growth and prosperity set out in the Northern Powerhouse Independent Economic Review. Working closely with the policy and modelling teams, it undertakes internal analysis, evidence reviews, externally commissioned research and collaboration with partners across the North to support evidence-based policy making.

This role leads and manages the development of the TfN strategic research programme, specifically focussed around the impact and benefits of transport on people, places and businesses. This includes identifiying research gaps and designing and commissioning bespoke research projects to support TfN in developing business cases to support transformational investment in the North’s transport network.

As a Senior Officer of the team you will be required to apply technical expertise and practical approaches to deliver a programme of strategic research and analysis that supports TfN to develop and deliver transformational investment in transport in the North.

You will also lead TfN’s approach to monitoring and evaluation of outcomes, ensuring there is a consistent approach to evidence generation, benchmarking and benefit realisation across all TfN programmes and activities.

You will be expected to collaborate with others across both TfN and its partners as well as research bodies, academics and government to deliver research, analysis and data insight, and will contribute to the development of the evidence base across the North.

What we’re looking for:

The successful candidate will have a strong track record of using evidence and analysis in policy development as well the proficiency to interpret complex data and apply quantitative and qualitative methodologies to complex policy issues. You must also have strong experience developing technical outputs for implementation in the development of strategies, plans and business cases.

As senior officer you will have considerable experience engaging with senior officers in central and/or local government regarding analysis and evidence is, including external organisations and stakeholders and will have the ability and confidence to represent TfN in public, professional and stakeholder forums. A demonstrated effective management of working relationships with internal stakeholders at executive/senior management level is essential.

Candidates must possess a degree and or a professional qualification in a relevant subject or have the equivalent experience.

Provisional Interview Date: Friday 3^rd April 2020

In return, as well as a competitive salary, our other benefits include:

·       27 days holiday per annum (Pro-Rata for part time employees)

·       Access to the local government pension scheme

·       Access to various salary sacrifice benefits, including Travel Pass purchase scheme.

·       Access to TfN’s Flexi-Time Scheme, allowing accrual of up to 18 additional days leave per year

For more information on the role and the kind of person we’re looking for please refer to the role profile and person specification.

If you believe you have the skills and experience we’re looking for please apply online at transportforthenorth.com/vacancies ensuring that in your application you provide evidence in the form of specific examples of how you meet the essential criteria in the role profile.

We welcome and encourage applications from everyone regardless of age, disability, gender, ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation. We are particularly keen to encourage applications from women, members of ethnic minority groups and people with disabilities who are currently under-represented.

As part of our commitment to diversity and inclusion, all applications will be considered on their merit.

Want to know more about Transport for The North, then visit us on www.transportforthenorth.com, or look at our twitter page or find us on LinkedIn.