External Affairs Officer

**About Us**
The Guinness Partnership is one of the leading providers of social housing and care services in England. We build and manage homes and provide housing services to around 140,000 customers nationwide. Of our 64,000 homes, more than 70% are let at a social or affordable rent, while around 10,000 are owned or part-owned by the people who live in them.

Our vision is to deliver great service, provide great homes, to be a great business and to be a great place to work. Because everything we do is about our customers, our communities and our people, any profit we make is re-invested in new and existing homes and improving services.

**About the role**
We have an exciting new opportunity for an External Affairs Officer to join our team in Brock Street, London on a permanent, full-time contract.

This is a really important time for housing and social housing in particular. England is in the midst of a housing crisis and we are committed to playing our part in tackling it.

You’ll help Guinness by providing policy and public affairs support to the External Affairs Team and by providing a comprehensive horizon scanning service to colleagues across the business. You’ll draft and research consultation responses and reports and build relationships with sector bodies and stakeholders. You’ll play a central role in our approach to influencing, including how we strategically manage stakeholder relations.

**Key Responsibilities**:

- Undertake horizon scanning for Guinness providing regular updates to be used by the Chief Executive, Executive Team and the Board, and adapt for wider business use.
- Draft well evidenced responses to external stakeholder consultations and take responsibility for submissions.
- Develop and demonstrate an understanding of a wide range of social housing policy areas.
- Prepare and provide briefings for senior colleagues on a range of external policy issues.
- Build relationships, and support colleagues to build and maintain relationships, with key political stakeholders.
- Prepare written briefings for MPs and other stakeholders.
- Undertake high quality research across a wide range of external policy areas to support Guinness’ influencing work and stakeholder relations.
- Work with colleagues to maintain and further develop our approach to stakeholder mapping and monitoring, and maintain stakeholder management system.

**What we’re looking for**
We’re a customer-focussed organisation so we know that how we do things is just as important as what we do. You will have an understanding of how the external environment impacts our day-to-day operations and crucially how best we can engage with this. You will probably have an interest in UK politics and relevant policy and be able to link up the big picture with the day-to-day.

**You’ll also be able to demonstrate**:

- Excellent written and oral communication skills for drafting briefings, reports, letters and other documents for internal and external use, and for internal and external events.
- Able to manage competing short and long-term priorities effectively and systematically.
- Highly self-motivated and will pursue goals with rigour.
- Experience of undertaking or managing research and / or analysis to enhance business performance and understanding of key issues.
- Be able to quickly understand and explain the links between Government policy changes and day-to-day operations.
- Good working knowledge of Microsoft Office including Work, Excel and PowerPoint.
- Demonstrate the Guinness behaviours.

**Desirable**
- Experience of undertaking policy development and influencing work.
- Experience of managing and / or using stakeholder management systems.
- An understanding of the workings of the UK Parliament and central and local government.

**Essential qualifications**:

- Educated to A-level or equivalent.