Group Head of Biodiversity

Job Title: Group Head of Biodiversity

Location: Midlands, NN4

Looking for a career where your ambition meets real opportunity? Join Persimmon Homes as a Group Head of Biodiversity and step into a role where your success is celebrated, your growth supported, and your work truly matters.

Why Persimmon Homes?

We’re one of the UK’s largest and most established housebuilders — FTSE 100 listed, with 29 regional offices and thousands of quality homes built every year.

At Persimmon, we don’t just build homes — we build careers. When you join us as a Head of Biodiversity, you’ll benefit from:

• Competitive salary
• Company car/Car allowance
• 5* housebuilder - Be part of a company that consistently delivers quality homes and outstanding customer satisfaction
• Health Care
• Life Cover & Contributory Pension
• Bonus
• Employee Benefits Platform – giving you access to high-street discounts, wellbeing support, and more
• Committed to diversity, inclusion, and empowering your development

What is the role?

We are looking for a highly experienced biodiversity / ecology professional to be our Group Head of Biodiversity. This is an exciting opportunity to join the company and continue delivery of our biodiversity strategy, creation of best practice, and support our regional teams with biodiversity net gain (BNG) delivery. You will lead on biodiversity, representing the Group externally, engaging on legislation, and contributing to wider biodiversity work in the sector, progressing biodiversity standards and best practice.  

The role reports directly to our Group Sustainability Director, with close working relationships with other senior roles within the Group, particularly Group Land & Planning and Group Technical. This role will interact widely across the business, assisting all the regions with biodiversity strategies and advising at a senior level on industry wide issues. The role will require some travel across the Persimmon businesses, with hybrid working from one of our national offices, ideally located in the Midlands.

What you’ll do as a Head of Biodiversity

• Lead our biodiversity and nature strategy, policy and procedures, supporting the business and regional teams in the delivery of sustainable places and communities.
• Be at the forefront of biodiversity matters, and provide a high degree of expertise, advice and support to regional teams, to ensure optimised BNG delivery and compliance.
• Develop BNG guidance, best practices, processes and training to support embedding biodiversity practices across all business operations.
• Establish KPIs and reporting protocols to measure and report on performance as part of our reporting requirements.
• Assess ecologist and landscaping consulting skills and capabilities to ensure efficient and cost-effective delivery.
• Advise the business on legislative requirements relating to biodiversity and nature, engaging with internal and external stakeholders.
• Act as our ‘front of house’ on biodiversity matters including representation on industry working groups, engaging with Government and other key stakeholders.
• Be at the forefront of emerging technologies and solutions to support BNG delivery.
• Support the business in the development of biodiversity site exemplars, public sector land bids, and biodiversity opportunities to enhance Brand recognition and appeal.
• Build external working partnerships and relationships with nature related organisations.
• Work in collaboration with the wider sector working groups on biodiversity best practice.

What experience do I need?

• A minimum BSc Hons Ecology or Conservation related degree, and membership of a professional institute.
• Proven biodiversity experience in a senior ecologist / manager /associate director role within a house building, main contracting, consultancy or civil engineering organisation.
• A high degree of knowledge and understanding of biodiversity issues and trends, legislation and application of biodiversity net gain methodologies and calculations.
• An applied knowledge of the planning system and planning policy in relation to biodiversity to support teams in securing planning applications.
• Commercially minded, able to optimise outcomes and support wider business objectives.
• Excellent communication skills, able to translate complex issues for a range of audiences, both written and verbal and able to tailor messaging to different audiences.
• Experienced professional and well regarded in the industry, able to represent the business externally, engage with industry bodies and Government.
• A resilient leader with the ability to work as part of varied teams, whilst building strong relationships both internally and externally.
• Innovative mindset, seeking to improve ways of working, and optimise the opportunities from new technologies.
• The ability to work with high productivity in a hybrid work environment, and a willingness to travel to projects across the UK as required.