Senior City Policy Officer

The Senior City Policy Officer in the Food Foundation will work to harness local powers and evidence-based approaches to transform local food systems, with a core focus on the city of Birmingham.
- Are you based in Birmingham and passionate about the city’s food system?
- Do you have a working knowledge of the policies which local authorities can adopt to support food system change?
- Do you enjoy connecting people who could work together or learn from one another?

**If the answers to these questions are yes, we would love to hear from you**
- **Hours**:Full time, 37.5 hours per week (willing to consider part time hours, minimum of 4-day week)
- **Salary**: £30,555 to £34,830
- **Working pattern**: Remote, but you must be based in the Birmingham area and willing to travel around Birmingham for stakeholder meetings

**Job Purpose**

The Senior City Policy Officer will work within the Food Foundation’s Policy and Advocacy Team and will be based in Birmingham. You will also provide a link between the work on the ground in Birmingham and the nationally-focused policy work which the Food Foundation is pursuing, ensuring that Birmingham’s experience informs the Food Foundation’s engagement with Government departments and parliamentary stakeholders. You will also draw on the wider expertise within the Food Foundation team to ensure that Birmingham’s food work is informed by the evidence and engagement work which the Food Foundation is undertaking with policy makers and businesses.

You will support Birmingham City Council’s Food Team to successfully deliver their Food Strategy, including by sharing and documenting best practice from elsewhere in the UK and beyond. You will connect the Food Team with experts and practitioners who could usefully inform their action and identify stakeholders who should be consulted and included within their planned activity. You will be required to work from the Council’s offices regularly, and will be embedded within the Council’s Food Team.

**A week in the job will look like**:
Meeting with a local business in the city to discuss the City Council’s Food Strategy and to gauge their interest in getting involved, responding to a request from Birmingham City Council’s Food Team to understand the best practice and evidence around a particular action or policy it is considering implementing, connecting experts in the Mandala Consortium to relevant members of the Council’s Food Team, visiting a Birmingham school which is concerned about children missing out on free school meals and connecting them with the Food Foundation staff working on the national free school meals campaign, facilitating a workshop with food charities operating in the city to identify opportunities to take action, setting up a call with a food lead in another city in the UK to discuss opportunities to collaborate.

**Your experience**

You will likely have direct experience of working with or within a local authority on food policy and projects. You will have demonstrable experience in engaging and connecting stakeholders, have experience of collating and using evidence to achieve impact and have a track record in project management skills.

**Main Responsibilities**
- Coordinating the workstreams being set up to implement the Birmingham Food Strategy, ensuring that meeting schedules are well organised and action focused; and supporting the workstreams with their work as necessary.
- Synthesising information on best practice to support the Council’s Food Team in the delivery of their Food Strategy, particularly around the challenge of generating business activity which supports people to shift towards more healthy and sustainable diets, and connecting the Council’s Food Team to experts and practitioners from elsewhere in the UK and from within the Food Foundation team.
- Creating a plan to support the Mandala consortium in effectively communicating its research findings with Birmingham and other cities - using tools such as visits, curated interviews and films, stakeholder debates, and data visualisations.
- Setting up a learning network of UK cities who can share experience and best practice on council-led approaches to improving food.
- Coordinating a large network of stakeholders within the city and beyond who are involved in food system change and who can be mobilised for research and priority actions.

**PERSON PROFILE**

**Technical Skills**
- Knowledge and understanding of food systems issues at the city level (including those relating to health, poverty and sustainability) and policy levers for change
- Evidence of successful engagement with a variety of stakeholders to inspire action and support for food systems change
- Experience of large group facilitation and consensus building
- Understanding of processes to promote knowledge transfer and to develop and disseminate good practice

**Personal Skills**
- Excellent communication skills, both written and oral
- Strong skills and