The planning system is one of the most important layers of everyday democracy. It shapes our homes, our neighbourhoods, our environment and therefore our lives. Yet the planning system we have today is famous for being slow, opaque, bureaucratic and inaccessible, especially to those who don’t have a lot of money or time.

We are working with a growing group of councils and the Department for Levelling Up, Homes and Communities (DLUHC) to build a planning system fit for the 21st century. To do this, we are building Plan✕, an open source, low-code platform that allows planning authorities to collaboratively build and deploy simple, accessible planning services that use ‘rules-as-code’ to bake legislation, policies and guidance into the services themselves, making the planning process simpler and more transparent for everyone.

We are also working with those planning authorities to build those user-centered planning services, and to keep them up to date.

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The role will involve:

• Researching and mapping out new digital planning services that will allow people to successfully navigate the planning process.
• Hosting workshops to gather feedback and insights from stakeholders.
• Making sense of planning legislation and policies, converting them into rules.
• Writing services as flowcharts in the Plan✕ editor, using clear and accessible language.
• Working with planning officers, content designers and user researchers to test and improve those services.

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• Knowledge of service design Good (or better) understanding of the methodologies and principles of designing good services.
• Excellent logic / analytical skills Able to unpick complex, overlapping sources of information and make sense out of them. Willing to do the hard work to make it simple for users. (We have put an optional puzzle below).
• Clear thinker You must be a natural lucid thinker; someone who can see the wood for the trees. Or if you don’t understand something, you are someone who has the confidence to say so, and ask a person who does.
• A natural do-er deliverer Someone who is happy to take the initiative and quickly build a first version of a service to a decent service, which others can then help test and improve.
• Good content writing skills Able to write clear, accessible, jargon-free web content in plain english without distorting its meaning.
• A good listener and communicator able to draw-out people’s knowledge, build trust, to read between the lines of what stakeholders are telling you, being sensitive to their fears and concerns while also finding ways to allay those fears.
• Purpose driven Motivated by working on things that matter, and will have a meaningful impact on society, not just make a few rich people richer.

• Significant relevant experience designing services and/or content for the web especially for public services.
• Experience or knowledge of the planning system

We are aware that you might not exactly fit the role exactly as we've described it. If you are interested in this role, but are not sure if you exactly fit all of this description, or if you have ideas about reshaping this role, please apply anyway – or get in touch with us.

• Work with a small, but incredibly talented, friendly, and motivated team in a high-expectations, but always kind and inclusive environment.
• Ridiculously flexible working. Work where you want and when you want (most of the time at least).
• Take a key role in designing and building the planning services of the next decades, and pioneer the use of low-code, collaborative tools to build and deploy services across government.

If you are a service designer with a passion for innovation and a desire to make a difference, we’d love to hear from you.

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Puzzle challenge (optional)

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Can you write the piece of legislation below as a flowchart, using simple questions that could be understood by an 11 year old? If so, please submit your flowchart in any format along with your CV when you apply for the role.

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The Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015, Schedule 2, Part 1

A.3  Development is permitted by Class A subject to the following conditions—

(a)the materials used in any exterior work (other than materials used in the construction of a conservatory) must be of a similar appearance to those used in the construction of the exterior of the existing dwellinghouse;

(b)any upper-floor window located in a wall or roof slope forming a side elevation of the dwellinghouse must be—

(i)obscure-glazed, and

(ii)non-opening unless the parts of the window which can be opened are more than 1.7 metres above the floor of the room in which the window is installed;

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