Planning and Transport
Traffic planning for Glastonbury festival, responding to flood events, facilitating housing and economic growth, establishing a pathway to decarbonisation, and developing innovative approaches to urban and rural transport challenges. And that’s just for starters.
Here in Planning and Transport, you’ll get involved in some of the most high-profile growth projects in Somerset. We host Hinkley Point C the largest infrastructure in Europe and worth over £3 billion to the southwest economy.
Now ask any of our people why they work here, and they’ll tell you about the incredible satisfaction that comes from being able to see your work make a difference. That, and the variety, the challenge and the unique career building opportunities.
Developing and supporting you
Whichever role you work in you’ll be supported by a talented and progressive team – where we thrive on positive and constructive challenge. There are great opportunities for career development and we offer mentoring and coaching to help you be your best.
We support hybrid working – so depending on the needs of the role, you’ll have the freedom to work from home and our office spaces around the county.
Spotlight on Highways
There are around 120 of us working in Highways from Highways Superintendents to Engineers. What are we all about? Well, delivering highway schemes to time, cost and quality but most importantly making a difference to local communities.
We have over £50m of major highway projects in progress, with more planned. As the highways authority, we look after 6,600km of road, 2,000 bridges, 900km of ditches, 120,000 gullies and 52,000 street lights. This network is growing too, with 9km of new highway every year, 9,500 planning applications every year and 700+ live development sites at any one time.
Somerset leads the way on climate change
Somerset County Council has been ranked by Climate Emergency UK as the top county council in the UK when it comes to taking a lead on climate change.
We’ve made significant investment to combat climate change, alongside the joint work being carried out with District Councils as part of the Climate Emergency Strategy.
Initiatives include the £1.5m Climate Emergency Community Fund, which has been used to help develop community projects which share the council’s vision of working towards a climate resilient Somerset. So far 44 projects have been funded, ranging from installing Solar PV panels on community buildings to supporting community vegetable growing projects.
Planning at the council
Our planning team handle planning applications that relate to minerals, waste and our own County Council developments such as schools, libraries and new roads. All while ensuring the natural environment is protected.
It’s rewarding and varied work and the team are encouraged to take up training opportunities provided by professional bodies as well as on the job learning.
The smaller teams within planning include:
Acoustics / Enforcement / Ecology / Planning Policy / Development Management
Get in touch
We're always pleased to hear from talented people. So if you've got any questions about the opportunities that we have available in Planning and Transport, or if there's anything else you'd like to know before you apply (or even during the application process), please get in touch with us.
Email the teamInside the council
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