Sustainable Transport Projects Coordinator Remote
Job description
We are seeking an experienced, enthusiastic coordinator to support community projects that aim
to integrate and develop sustainable transport and empower communities. You will support
community rail partnerships and groups around Britain to accelerate locally-led initiatives
that connect rail with buses and active travel, enabling greener, fairer, more inclusive
mobility.
About us
Community Rail Network is a national not-for-profit organisation supporting a growing
‘community rail’ movement, which helps communities get the most from their railways, promotes
sustainable and inclusive travel, coordinates volunteering and place-making, and brings people together.
It’s an exciting time to be joining us, with community rail expanding, increasingly influential
in transport development, and highly relevant to tackling the climate crisis and social
inequalities.
Community rail is made up of 75 community-based partnership organisations, and more than 1,200
station volunteer groups and other community-led initiatives across Britain. Their activities
range from creative projects for young people, to advising train operators on service
improvements, to building travel confidence among families and people with disabilities, to
biodiversity projects at stations, to promoting green tourism.
Our team of 21 mainly works from home in different locations, but we have a small Huddersfield
office and come together regularly in person and online. We advise our members, provide
training, events and resources, and champion community rail and its insights. We believe in
developing our team, supporting everyone to reach their potential while having good work-life
balance.
About this role
This role aims to meet an identified need among many of our member groups across Britain, in
their work to engage local communities and put rail at the heart of a sustainable, equitable
and climate-safe transport system. Innovative and successful initiatives are increasingly
springing up in community rail focused on multi-modal integration: ensuring that trains, buses,
community transport, active travel and shared mobility are working in synergy.
We want to step up our work in this area, sharing good practice, enabling replication and
learning, bringing in wider expertise, and helping members to overcome challenges and create
lasting change. This new, fixed-term role in our member support and development team will
enable us to do this. Responsibilities include:
Set up and run a forum on integrated sustainable travel, enabling our members to share
experience and best practice, work through challenges, and make initiatives happen.
Engage with our partners in the sustainable and active travel field, fostering local links
between their networks and community rail, and drawing on their expertise and support.
Identify exemplar projects that can be developed and held up across community rail and more
widely, which are connecting rail with buses, community transport, or active travel, or a broad
modal mix, according to local needs. These may include existing/past projects that can be
extended, scaled up or better evaluated, and new initiatives we can closely support.
Proactively support these projects to help them deliver positive change, such as
facilitating local meetings, workshops and engagement, and bringing in wider partners,
expertise and examples, and encouraging holistic and inclusive thinking and attention to local
needs.
Work with project leads to support evaluation and evidence gathering, helping them to
identify intended outcomes and create theories of change, monitor and record outputs and
impacts, and co-creating case studies.
Encourage and support our members to take advantage of our own integrated sustainable
transport grants fund, and wider sources of funding, to support their projects.
Work with colleagues and partners to share and spread good practice, such as feeding into
our events and communications teams on opportunities to showcase exemplar projects, and working
with our SMT to advise industry and government on sustainable travel.
Help us build a fuller picture of community rail’s support needs, ambitions and development
opportunities in this area of work, aiming to build a lasting legacy from this work.
Skills and competencies
Demonstrable experience in supporting or running community projects and building local
partnerships and networks, ideally related to sustainability, transport and/or mobility;
Understanding of and strong commitment to sustainable and inclusive transport, including
appreciation of the importance of rail, public transport, and sustainable and healthy travel to
communities;
A good understanding of community engagement, local communications, project planning and
evaluation techniques;
An ability to engage and communicate effectively with community groups and local partners
across public, private and third sectors, including drawing on their views and expertise,
facilitating collaborative working, and supporting them to build capacity and confidence;
Excellent interpersonal skills and the ability to work confidently with stakeholders at all
levels and facilitate positive discussion; articulate and assertive, and a great team player;
A proven ability to develop and maintain mutually-beneficial partnerships, deliver joint
activities, and form professional networks;
Good writing and analysis skills, with the ability to draw on quantitative and qualitative
evidence, produce case studies and reports;
A demonstrable ability to manage time effectively and juggle a range of activities in an
organised, professional, productive manner, including planning and scheduling, coordinating
with colleagues and partners, and bringing projects to fruition;
Proactive, positive and self-motivated, able to work on own initiative and inspire and
enthuse others, and overcome hurdles to achieve results;
IT literate with a good working knowledge of Microsoft Office, the internet and social
media.
To apply
Email [email protected] by
11pm, 11th May 2023 with two attachments: your CV and a covering letter of up to two
sides of A4 summarising why you are the ideal person for this job and your relevant experience
and competencies. Please include a daytime phone number.
First interviews take place on 18-19 May on Zoom/Teams. Second interviews will likely be in
person the following week. Candidates invited to interview will be contacted by phone about a
week before. Due to limited resources, we are unable to provide feedback to candidates not
shortlisted.
Other information
As you will be home-based we are flexible about your location. However, you will be expected to
travel to our office in Huddersfield for in-person full-team meetings quarterly, and occasional
visits to members you are supporting (alongside online/phone support), will be important. We
therefore welcome applications from those with decent public transport links not too far from a
railway station to enable journeys to be made sustainably.
This is a part-time position: we are open to discussing between 3.5 and 4 days per week. We use
a flexi-time system, with the core hours 10am-3pm, and we are committed to being a flexible,
supportive and understanding employer. This is a fixed term position for 10 months, with a
probationary period of two months.
Community Rail Network is an equal opportunities employer.
