Environmental Strategy, Policy & Regulation Manager

Location
Flexible within the Anglian Water region, with regular travel required to central offices including working in Cambridge on Mondays.
Hours
Full Time, Permanent (With options for Part-Time)
Salary
Circa £50,000 - £57,000 depending on skills and experience
About the Role
Join Anglian Water and help shape the future of sustainable water management across one of the UK's most environmentally important regions. This is a rare opportunity to influence environmental policy, shape long-term resource strategy, and work directly with regulators to balance environmental protection with water security for millions of customers. As climate change, population growth, and environmental pressures intensify, ensuring abstraction remains sustainable has never been more critical. In this role, you will provide strategic, regulatory, and analytical leadership to protect water supplies for customers while enhancing the natural environment.
Reporting to the Water Resources Environment Manager, you will lead on abstraction strategy, regulatory risk management, and public interest case development. You will act as the focal point for managing abstraction licence change risks across AMP programmes, ensuring emerging risks are identified early, robust mitigation is in place, and regulatory commitments are delivered on time.
Working collaboratively across the business and with external regulators, you will shape long‑term sustainable abstraction strategy and integrate abstraction requirements into key programmes such as WRMP29, PR29, AWINEP, and the Environmental Destination Strategy.
Key responsibilities include:
- Leading the assessment and management of environmental and regulatory risks impacting water resource availability and long-term resilience
- Working with regulators, environmental bodies, consultants, and internal experts to develop solutions that protect the environment while maintaining secure water supplies
- Maintaining a central record of proposed licence changes, tracking drivers, risks, dependencies, and mitigations
- Monitoring progress and emerging risks, ensuring timely escalation and intervention where required
- Identifying when abstraction caps cannot be met and leading the development of robust Public Interest Case reports (IROPI / OPI)
- Collaborating with the Sustainable Abstraction Programme Team to design environmental mitigation and compensatory measures
- Shaping and influencing long‑term sustainable abstraction strategy, including innovative approaches such as dynamic abstraction licensing
- Ensuring abstraction needs and licence caps are fully and accurately reflected in longer term plans (WRMP29, PR29) and wider environmental programmes
- Providing strategic insight on emerging regulatory trends, risks, and opportunities
- Influencing future regulatory direction through proactive engagement and policy shaping
- Managing consultant support to deliver technical, regulatory, and evidence‑based case development
- Championing a strong health, safety, and continuous improvement culture
Experience
- Degree qualified in an environmental, policy/regulation, scientific, engineering or related discipline, or equivalent professional experience
- Experience leading complex project or programme management activities
- Strong experience working with regulators, ideally within environmental or water sectors
- Proven ability to develop and present robust, evidence‑based regulatory cases
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with confidence presenting to senior stakeholders
- Strong analytical skills with the ability to interpret emerging risks and complex data
- Ability to lead, influence, and inspire across multidisciplinary teams
- Highly organised, self‑motivated, and comfortable managing competing priorities
- Working towards chartered status (desirable)
- Water company or utilities sector experience (desirable)
About you
Passionate about environmental protection, comfortable working with complex data and regulations, and motivated to make a tangible difference in sustainable water management.
Qualifications
Degree or equivalent professional experience in a relevant discipline. Progress towards chartered status is desirable.
Benefits
- Personal private health care
- 26 days annual leave, rising with service, plus Bank Holidays
- Option to swap Christmas and Easter holidays for those celebrated by your religion
- Life cover at 8x your salary
- Personal accident cover up to 5x your salary
- Flexible working options
- Competitive pension scheme – Anglian Water double‑matches your contribution up to 6%
- Bonus scheme
- A wide range of flexible benefits to support your wellbeing and lifestyle
Anglian Water Services Ltd










