Planning Enforcement Investigator

How You'll Make a Difference As a Planning Enforcement Investigator, you will help make South Gloucestershire a safe place to live, visit, and work in. Working as part of a team, you will play a key role in contributing towards a high-quality built environment for the enjoyment of all residents and visitors. What You Will Be Doing Working as part of the team responsible for the carrying out of investigations against complaints regarding alleged breaches of planning control, monitoring the implementation of planning permissions and responding to planning enforcement related enquiries. You will establish and understand the relevant site history and planning constraints and collate evidence from complainants, alleged offenders and other interested parties. It will be your responsibility to analyse investigations in planning terms and assess the facts of the case and compliance with the planning system. Communicating effectively with a range of internal and external individuals, you will represent the Planning Enforcement Service and South Gloucestershire Council in delivering a high-quality service, demonstrating the councils core values. What We Need From You We require you to have experience of working within planning or undertaking investigations. Ideally, you will understand planning enforcement legislation and policy and have used scaled drawings and maps. Given the elements of the role, you will be a confident user of computer systems, it would be advantageous to have experience with uniform, IDOX and PowerBI. You must have strong communication skills, both in conversation and in writing and can use diplomacy and decisiveness during difficult conversations. It is essential that you are organised as you will have an assigned workload and will be required to achieve set deadlines. Whilst it is expected that your role will mostly be carried out from your home or office, it is vital that you have the confidence and are competent to carry out lone-working site visits. You will need clear organisation skills and relevant software competency to manage a varied caseload with targeted response times. What You Need To Know You may be expected to travel throughout the authority you must have a full, valid driving licence with regular access to a vehicle or have an alternative means of travel. This role is hybrid, with a mixture of working at our office in Yate, working in the community, and working from home. Interviews will be held week commencing 12th January 2026. How a Career At South Gloucestershire Council Is Different As part of our benefits package, you will receive generous annual leave (pro rata), employee wellbeing support and you will have access to a range of staff discounts, including eye tests, travel, shopping and leisure activities.  We recognise that our diverse team of skilled and dedicated people make us a great place to work. We welcome applications from everyone and ensure that individuals are selected, promoted and developed on the basis of their merits and abilities. We value our staff as individuals, investing in their careers and we are recognised for the quality, breadth and depth of our training and development offer, which helps make the greatest long-term difference in work. We trust our team to work in the way which allows them to make the biggest difference, and we continue to invest in technology to help staff do their jobs to the best of their ability and celebrate innovation. Our teams at South Gloucestershire Council are making a real difference to the lives of people who live, work and learn here. We're building and shaping communities which people are proud of. We're planning for the future; building and improving the roads, railways, schools, green spaces, and houses. We’re providing essential services across our communities to ensure they are safe and well maintained. We've achieved a great deal, but we need talented and dedicated people to ensure we continue to make a difference. We’re making a difference, be part of it To view the full job description, please click this link: Planning Enforcement Investigator job description1