River Skills Officer

ORCA
ORCA

Full-time

Remote

GBP 34,169-36,352 / year

Posted on Oct 24, 2026

Salary: £34,169- £36,352 per annum
Contract length: Permanent. 35 hour per week.
Location: Hybrid at Thames21 offices and home working. Delivering training sessions at locations across London, occasionally at other locations where the charity works.
Responsible to: EMPOWER Rivers Programme Manager

Thames21

Thames21 is a leading environmental charity, working across London and the Thames Basin to deliver high-impact nature-based solutions to the climate and biodiversity crisis through restoring rivers, whilst also connecting communities to their local green-blue spaces and inspiring long-term stewardship of them.

The role

We are seeking a skilled River Skills Officer to joinThames21 working on our projects in London and the Thames Basin. This role offers an opportunity for the post holder to lead on the delivery and development of Thames21’s environmental training programme, which aims to empower communities to take independent action for rivers. Furthermore, the post holder will contribute to the support of Thames21’s network of volunteer-led River Action Groups.

The key skill for this role is the ability to create and deliver inclusive, engaging and inspiring courses that help people understand what makes a healthy river; explore the crucial role that rivers play in our lives; and demonstrate how everyone can be involved in protecting, maintaining and improving London’s blue-green spaces.

The key value for this role is a passion for rivers and learning, coupled with the ability to share that enthusiasm with diverse groups of people, helping them to build their knowledge and skills to enhance London’s blue-green spaces.

You’ll thrive in this role if you enjoy breaking down complex ideas and processes, making them accessible to a wide range of audiences. You will be comfortable working with people in a variety of settings, mixing theory with practice.

A typical day is likely to involve delivering one of Thames21’s flagship courses, gathering ideas for new training or making tweaks to existing modules; contacting community-led River Action Groups about upcoming activities, or keeping on track with various admin tasks. You might be working from home, at one of our offices in Bow or Guildhall, or at a river talking learners through the physical features in a river.You could be checking over River Action Group risk assessments, promoting training opportunities or advising a local community river action group about organising their first session.

You might also be helping to plan the annual River Action Group Forum to create opportunities for River Action Groups to learn from each other and build power as a network or working on strategic long-term plans or monitoring project outputs and incorporating learnings into project development. You’ll be thinking both big and small on any given day.

Diversity

We primarily serve a London community, and we would love our organisation to better reflect the diversity of this great city. We encourage applications from people of all backgrounds. Being a diverse and inclusive organisation is very important to us. We actively encourage applications from candidates with diverse cultures, perspectives and lived experiences. This role is primarily about skilling up community groups to take independent action for rivers, therefore a strong interest and working knowledge of environmental issues is essential.

Main duties and responsibilities

  1. Deliver courses on a range of topics, both indoors, online, and at different blue space locations, ensuring training sessions meet the appropriate standards and learner outcomes.
  2. Design training courses, review and contribute to the development of the training programme, and collaborate with other Thames21 staff to create and enhance training initiatives.
  3. Ensure that training courses and community-led River Action Groups comply with relevant legislation and Thames21’s policies and procedures
  4. Day-to-day management of the training programme, including recruitment, promotion, logistics, learner support, and accreditation process.
  5. Provide ongoing advice and support for programme participants following training, encouraging them to set up, organise and deliver volunteering activity in their local community. Including support with monitoring impact, operational plans and receiving and approving Risk Assessments and Method Statements for River Action Group activities to ensure they are covered by Thames21 public liability insurance.
  6. Develop and support the Thames21 network of community-led River Action Groups, including linking groups to other community partners, e.g. other community groups, catchment partnerships and key decision makers such as local authorities and the Environment Agency
  7. Work with EMPOWER Rivers programme manager to coordinate annual River Action Group forum
  8. Maintain clear records of progress, ensure all administration and statistical information is kept up to date, and regularly upload information onto the Thames21 database.
  9. Represent Thames21 at community events, activities and partnership meetings.
  10. Attend internal meetings as required and engage positively with the supervision and appraisal process
  11. Work with colleagues to ensure documents and processes for employing Event Support Contractors are appropriate and up to date.

This job description cannot cover every issue or task that may arise within the post at various times. The post-holder will be expected to carry out other reasonable duties from time to time which are broadly consistent with other Thames21 activities and with those in this document.

Additional Information:

  • Thames21 have a Workplace (Auto Enrol) Pension Scheme with NEST
  • The postholder must be prepared to work occasional evenings and weekends
  • The postholder must be willing to travel sensibly throughout London and occasionally throughout the UK overnight and perhaps abroad
  • 25 days paid annual leave are available plus public holidays. In addition, the Thames21 office is closed between Christmas and New Year.
  • Thames21 operate a flexitime system of working
  • Interest free season ticket loan or bike loan
  • Mobile phone and laptop for company use

For more information on Thames21, please visit our website at www.thames21.org.uk.

For any queries about this position, please email Sam Bentley-Toon at sam.bentley-toon@thames21.org.uk

The closing date for applications is: 9am 16 November

Interview dates: 26, 27 November (subject to change)

We appreciate the time you will have taken to apply to this role, and we do appreciate that it is disconcerting when you don’t hear back from a role you have applied for. However, due to the high number of applications we expect to receive, we are unable respond to or give feedback on individual applications, but we do want to be able manage expectations. Therefore, if you do not hear from us within 4 weeks of the closing date, please assume that your application has not been successful on this occasion.

No agencies please

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