Commonweal hiring: Policy and Communications Manager

Commonweal Housing is recruiting a Policy and Communications Manager to join our friendly London-based team.

At Commonweal, we use our charitable resources to provide experts and partner organisations with the opportunity to trial and test new approaches designed to enhance housing equality and justice. Independently evaluating each of our projects we share our experiences, using this learning to inspire new thinking.

Through the replication of what works and the lessons from what doesn’t, we influence changes in policy and practice. In addition, we commission other research identifying and spotlighting new areas of housing injustice. 

As Policy and Communications Manager, reporting directly to the CEO and working as part of and alongside our project leads you will formulate our policy messages. You will help lead on stakeholder engagement and growing the understanding across our sector of who Commonweal are and what we can offer. You will shape and then develop and deliver the strategy for effectively communicating our growing range of positive project findings and aligning our PR to public policy research initiatives. In short your role will be to put comms in to action!

About you

You will need to have experience of the voluntary and community sector as well public policy, the political environment and its current and potential implications for the charity.  You will be regularly presenting to Trustee Board meetings, ensuring Trustees and colleagues are involved and updated on external affairs activities to embed support for communications activities.  You will be supported in this role by a Communications Officer therefore experience of staff management would be desirable but not necessarily essential.

You will possess experience of working in a communications or PR environment, with strong written skills and design skills along with demonstrable knowledge of a range of communication channels (including print, broadcast and online media). Experience of liaison with the press and media securing the take up of press releases, opinion pieces or other outputs is important.

Ideally you will have experience in the field of housing or, homelessness r, but certainly a demonstrable interest in the positive role for housing whether professionally, personally or through lived experience.  However, more important is demonstrable experience of policy research and stakeholder engagement, especially communicating to influence and deliver impact to Parliamentarians, local authorities and others across the voluntary sector and public service environment. 

Staff or volunteer management would be helpful however a track record of building successful working relationships with a range of internal and external stakeholders, strong organisational skills and the ability to work on your own initiative are all a must.

Deadline for applications: 9.00 am on Friday 13^th September 2024

Initial interview date: Thursday 19^th September – via Zoom or TEAMS video platforms.         

Final interview in person at the Commonweal Offices: Friday 27^th September

For more details, and information on how to apply for the role please see here.