Lost Woods Senior Community Development Worker

Lost Woods Senior Community Development Worker

• Annual Salary Grade 6 SSP 27-30 – Starting salary £26253 – Pro Rata  (£15,751 actual)
• 21 hours per week – there may be some flexibility regarding hours.
• Allocated Lost Woods programme area (see map on Website) with some home-based working
• 28 days annual holiday (pro rata) & contributory pension scheme

About the role:

We are seeking to recruit a Senior Community Development worker with experience in
both community development and nature conservation projects. The Lost Woods project will
include developing and supporting networks, training, conservation, wellbeing, and citizen
science activities, to ensure that local residents and underserved communities can engage fully
with the Lost Woods programme. Additionally, the Senior Community Development worker will take
a lead role in aspects such as communications and social media, fundraising, conservation
planning, liaison with woodland owners or woodland activities for underserved groups, dependent
on skills and experience. The SCDW will be working as part of the AirS Lost Woods team to
ensure that the project meets its contractual outcomes and can provide robust evidence of its
work.

About Lost Woods of the Low Weald and Downs

The Lost Woods need saving; they are fragmented, diminished, encroached upon and threatened.
Time has separated them from their traditional connections with local communities. A multitude
of species rely on them for survival. We rely on them too, often unknowingly, as they store
carbon in their soils and timber, help to regulate temperatures as our summers grow hotter,
and, where left to grow a little wilder, slow the flow of water from extreme rainfall as our
climate changes. They have a vital role to play in combatting the effects of climate change.
Yet they are facing a barrage of threats.

Sited between two designated landscapes in Sussex, the Lost Woods are disproportionately at
risk from the threat of development. They are vulnerable to pests and diseases and threatened
by the climate crisis.

Pockets of woodland in the area are often unloved – many woodland owners do not have the skills
or knowledge to turn the condition of their woods around. Some do not know where to start;
others know what they want to do but lack time.

The woods of the Low Weald and Downs have existed for millennia and are the basis of
longstanding and complex relationships between diverse species, different habitats and human
beings. It is a fragile balance, which is at risk of collapse as the links between woods and
their surrounding communities grow ever more tenuous.

The Lost Woods programme aims to transform the Lost Woods of the Low Weald and Downs into
“Loved Woods”, part of a thriving and resilient natural landscape. Local people and communities
will be reconnected to their woodland heritage and given the skills, confidence and knowledge
to enjoy, care for, and protect them long into the future.

Lost Wood of the Low Weald and Downs is a five-year partnership programme supported by players
of the National Lottery through the National Lottery Heritage Fund and delivered by Action in
Rural Sussex, Small Woods Association, Sussex Wildlife Trust and Woodland Trust