External Affairs Manager; Midlands

Salary: £46,698 (London) / £42,373 (National) per annum

Hours: 35 hrs per week

Contract: Permanent

Benefits:

• 27 days annual leave + statutory holidays + 3 closures days over the Christmas period;
• Flexible working for all staff including working from home / hybrid working, and flexi-time/TOIL scheme;
• Attractive family friendly policies;
• Private healthcare cover;
• Season ticket loans;
• Employee awards, and training and development opportunities.

For more information about our benefits please visit our website.

Location: The successful candidate will be based in the Midlands or be prepared to spend a substantial amount of time in the Midlands (including early starts/late finishes and overnight stays where required) to meet the requirements of the role. The successful candidate will also be required to travel to our London and Bristol offices, and nationwide to NHF events, on an ad hoc basis.

An exciting opportunity has arisen at the National Housing Federation (NHF) to join our team of External Affairs Managers. The NHF is the voice of housing associations in England. We are the trade body to almost 600 housing associations, who have grown from philanthropic roots to provide 2.6 million homes to around 6 million people. You can find further information about the NHF here:

Could you be our new External Affairs Manager, working closely with our housing association members across the Midlands?

This is a unique and varied role which would appeal to someone with a background in areas such as stakeholder management, policy, public affairs, communications, programme management – or a combination of these areas! For example, you may be looking to step into a role to further develop your leadership and stakeholder engagement skills, whilst still building on your policy or programme management experience and knowledge.

You will operate at the heart of social housing by working with key decision makers across the housing association sector – including managing relationships with chief executives, chairs of boards and executive directors. Strong communication and influencing skills are essential to the role, as well as the confidence to work at the most senior levels.

It is crucial that you can work collegiately to lead key programmes of work across the NHF with colleagues in other teams, for example from our policy, press, events, and public affairs teams. Equally, you will be comfortable working autonomously and shaping your own work programme.

The core of the role involves being responsible for engagement with a whole geographic region of our membership; and working closely on or leading one of the NHF’s key themes of work, which include areas such as devolution; developing new homes; decarbonising existing homes; ensuring the building safety agenda is delivered; or representing our rural or smaller housing associations.

The role is wide ranging and in addition to stakeholder management and programme leadership, will include running round tables between our members and government, chairing sessions at NHF conferences, and presenting political and policy updates to senior teams within housing associations.

You will be part of a team of eight External Affairs Managers sitting within the member services directorate, which is there to ensure that we provide excellent value for money for our housing association members.

Key elements of the role:

• You will build and maintain brilliant relationships with housing associations leaders, using your well-developed communication and advocacy skills to maximum effect.
• You will develop knowledge, insight and understanding of housing associations to shape our policy and influencing work and to create structured programmes of member engagement on critical policy and political issues.
• You will be the contact point for housing associations in your region, ensuring they receive first class customer service on the issues which matter to them. Working closely with NHF members you will facilitate the organisation of regional chief executive or leaders forums and sounding boards.
• In addition to your regional work, you will lead on the strategic planning and delivery of a key NHF policy priority. This…