Assistant School Place Planning Officer

Organisation: Leicestershire County Council

Work Location: County Hall, LE3 8RA

Worker Category: Hybrid Worker

Salary: £35,451 - £39,165 per annum (pro rata for part-time)

Working Hours: 37 hours per week

Contract Type: Permanent

Closing Date: 8th February 2026

Interview Date(s): TBC

We are looking for an exceptional individual to help Leicestershire to deliver our statutory responsibilities in ensuring all children can access a high-quality local school place following the retirement of the current post holder. The post is for one year as cover for the current post holder who is covering the maternity leave of a School Place Planning Officer within the team.

Leicestershire is in a period of significant growth with thousands of new homes being built and new schools planned. This is a varied role, and the successful candidate will carry out a range of functions relating to school organisation, capital projects and pupil place planning.

As Assistant School Place Planning Officer you will be supporting the School Organisation Team to ensure that education infrastructure can meet the demand for school places and where additional places are required, those places are delivered in the right place and at the right time.

This role would suit someone looking to develop their career working across the organisation towards a more strategic level in the future. You will be actively involved in the monitoring of funding for new projects, managing statutory processes, engaging with our delivery partners and key stakeholders from inception through to completion to ensure all projects delivered on time and are aligned with the communities they serve.

The successful candidates will work in a small team helping to ensure that there are sufficient high quality school places in Leicestershire by delivering an ambitious Children and Families Capital Programme across all phases of Education. The work is interesting and varied and involves working closely with Schools and Academies.

To apply for this post, you must be able to

• Support School Place Planning Officers (SPPOs) to identify and appraise the need for additional places for children and young people at a local, District and County level.
• Support SPPOs in effectively engaging with District Councils, housing developers and their agents in respect of planned new housing/SUE’s to ensure that Leicestershire receives developer contributions needed.
• Take a lead role within the team for net capacity relating to School Organisation and Place Planning, providing high level advice and guidance where appropriate.
• Monitor requests and expenditure of S106 through Mastergov and produce reports for SPPOs, SMT and CSG.
• Organise and deliver key events including consultations, publicity events and member briefings in relation to school organisation matters.
• Support SPPOs to respond to requests for information from schools, other County Council officers, District Councils, developers, members of the public and external bodies
• Manage areas of the Capital Programme as required.

You must also have an understanding of, and commitment to, equality, diversity and inclusion.

In addition, we expect you to share our commitment to our values and will ask you to evidence when you have demonstrated them as part of the interview process.

Reasonable adjustments will be considered for applicants with a disability.

We are keen to support employees to balance their working life with other commitments. Therefore, wherever possible, we will consider working arrangements that suit an individual’s personal circumstances whilst still meeting the needs of the Council. If you would like to discuss the possible flexible working options that might be applicable to this role, please contact the person named below. This may include requests for term-time working, part-time hours, compressed hours, flexible start and finish times, home/remote working, etc.

Every role within the Council has a defined working style which determines where they can work. The worker category applicable to this post is detailed in the above advert. You can find out more about our worker…