The Country Parks Ranger team is dedicated to ensuring our beautiful parks are maintained to a high standard for our visitors to enjoy. As a Lead Ranger, you’ll co-ordinate and supervise the work of the Visitor Services Ranger team in the delivery of high-quality visitor services across Buckinghamshire Council’s Country Parks.
Based in Black Park Country Park, you’ll be surrounded by 500 acres of woodland used by over 750,000 visitors a year, with a new visitor hub area and expanded Go Ape offer opening in Spring 2025. Langley Park Country Park presents different challenges and opportunities, its Grade 2 historic landscape and nationally significant rhododendron gardens attract visitors from a wide area. Finally, Denham Country Park is different again with rivers and meadows being the key features, currently we are investing over £190k in this site to improve access and enhance habitats.
If you have a passion for the outdoors, great practical knowledge and experience, excellent customer service skills, are solution-focused and can get the most out of a team to deliver the day-to-day management and maintenance of our Country Parks, this could be the role for you.
About us
Buckinghamshire Council is a relatively new organisation that combines the strengths and expertise of the previous five councils in the county to create positive change for local people, communities, and businesses. We are firmly focused on the future and have made a clear commitment to serve residents better and to provide stronger representation for Buckinghamshire, both locally and nationally.
About the role
You’ll be joining a close-knit team, who will support you to get off to a great start with us. In this fast-paced and dynamic role, some of your responsibilities will be to:
* Plan and organise work programs for a team, supervising them on a day-to-day basis, supporting the delivery of their activities, managing their health and safety, and developing both your own and their professional skills, knowledge, and behaviours. Support Head Rangers in delivering performance reviews.
* Supervise and support the Events and Visitor Engagement Officers in the development and delivery of a full, diverse, and innovative annual events program, and the administration and operation of income-generating facilities, including private hire rooms and spaces.
* Manage on-site interpretation, signage and information for park visitors ensuring it is in a good state of repair, current and where appropriate management plans/spatial plans are followed. Prepare content for visitor information signage and interpretation and ensure consistency and quality for all materials produced across the Country Parks.
* Provide visitor information and support including social media, web content, displays, the office visitor reception and phones, inboxes, and delivery of questionnaires and customer insight activities.
* Support the Country Parks Film Officer in the planning and on-site management of location filming activities, including onsite crew management and support.
This role will require you to live on site in a property provided for better performance of duties and contribute to an on-call rota, respond to incidents and emergencies as required. A subsidised rent is payable along with all utility bills and council tax.
As part of the role, you will contribute to a rota that covers seasonally extended hours and working alternate weekends.
An enhancement will be paid for all weekend days worked on top of the advertised salary. You will also be required to work some bank holidays throughout the year, an enhancement and lieu time for all bank holiday days worked is also on top of the advertised salary.
About you
In this unique role, you will work to maintain the high standards of our country parks through effective work planning, based on site management plans, ensuring they remain a safe place for our visitors to enjoy. You will have excellent communication skills and the ability to manage relationships, as well as being organised and solutions-focused. You will possess relevant qualifications and experience of visitor engagement and countryside management. Above all, you’ll be enthusiastic and ambitious to learn new skills.
Other information
This role requires you to contribute to a rota that covers seasonally extended hours and working occasional weekends. You'll also need to hold a full driving licence, have access to your own vehicle, and pass a Buckinghamshire Council driving test.
Closing date of 13th February.
Shortlisting on 14th February.
Interviews on 25th and 26th February.
For an informal chat about this role in more detail, please contact Dawn, Head Ranger Visitor Services, on 01753 511060.
This post is covered by the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 and therefore applicants are required to declare:
* All unspent cautions and/or unspent convictions
We reserve the right to close the vacancy once we have received sufficient applications, so please be advised to submit your application as early as possible.
Our values
We have a set of values, which our employees have chosen, that represent what we are – Proud, Ambitious, Collaborative and Trustworthy.
By joining Buckinghamshire Council, you can expect:
* a fair and inclusive culture
* the chance to really make a difference to those around you
* health and well-being initiatives including an Employee Assistance Programme, Mental Health First Aiders and mindfulness workshops
* a unified voice through our Employee Representative Group
* ongoing support, and the opportunity to develop and progress in your career with us
* opportunities to take part in fun activities such as fundraising and social events
At Buckinghamshire Council, we know that our biggest strength comes from the people that work for us, and that’s why we’re working hard to ensure we continue to be an accessible and inclusive organisation.
From dedicated staff networks overseen by our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Steering Group, to proudly standing as a Disability Confident employer, it’s important to us that all our colleagues feel engaged, listened to, and valued. Our offer of flexible working empowers a productive and happy workforce and allows employees to combine work with other responsibilities and commitments.
We believe our workforce should reflect the diverse communities we service in Buckinghamshire, and are looking for like-minded individuals to join us in promoting equality, fairness, and inclusion for everyone.
About the Service Area
Our Communities directorate works across the county to deliver a number of the key customer-facing services that our residents, businesses and visitors rely on every day.
This directorate includes a wide range of services, including:
* collecting and disposing of waste and recycling
* maintaining our roads and Rights of Way network and parking
* ensuring the delivery of school transport, and supporting sustainable travel including public bus services and School Crossing Patrollers
* managing Country Parks
* leisure facilities, museums, theatres and libraries, as well as developing our Cultural Strategy
* licensing, cemeteries and crematoria
The customer is central to how we develop and deliver all of these services, which help promote our rich and vibrant culture and special environment.
We are looking for enthusiastic, ambitious and committed individuals to join our team and help us to continue to make Buckinghamshire a great place to live, work and visit. This is an exciting time for us as we bring together the services previously run by five separate councils before Buckinghamshire Council was created. Whilst making major changes to contracts affecting residents across Bucks, we continue to focus on delivering great customer service. You will join us on our journey of continuous improvement - whether that’s through developing strategies and ways of working or delivering services on the ground, every person in Communities is a valued member of the team.
We recognise and reward you
Hard work and success deserves recognition. That’s why we pride ourselves on the benefits we give our people. We actively encourage a good work-life balance and promote flexible and agile working arrangements. We provide discounts on various Cafés, restaurants, shops and auto enrolment onto our generous Pension Scheme. In addition to the opportunity to gain membership to Costco, we have discounted gym memberships, travel discounts with Arriva and much more.
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