The Public Affairs Lead at the Food Foundation provides expertise on building relationships with political stakeholders to deliver impact across all areas of our work aimed transforming food systems and shifting diets.
Do you have knowledge of the UK s political system and experience of how to influence policy-making?
Do you care about what we eat and its impact on our health and planet?
Do you want to work in a small, ambitious organisation and use your influencing skills to deliver real impact?
If the answers to these questions are yes, we would love to hear from you!
Hours: Full time, 37.5 hours per week (willing to consider part time hours, no less than 4 days)
Starting Salary: £39,960 (pro rata and London weighting included)
Contract: Permanent
Working pattern: This is a London based role (our office is in London, Brixton) and you will be expected to work at least 2 days per week from the office. Whilst there will be a need to regularly attend in-person meetings in parliament and officer, there is flexible working options.
Job requirements: An enhanced clean DBS check, obtained through The Food Foundation plus two references
Job Purpose
The Public Affairs Lead sits within our Policy and Advocacy Team, working to build support for The Food Foundation s work amongst Parliamentarians and to influence the government to help deliver policies that will transform the food system. This is an exciting opportunity to join a small organisation delivering big impact on the political agenda around food.
The Public Affairs Manager reports to our Head of Policy and Advocacy and will be responsible for planning and delivering our public affairs activity. You will spend considerable time meeting MPs and Peers in parliament and building relationships with their teams with a view to identifying potential new supporters and ensuring that The Food Foundation has a range of contacts that we can call on to support and amplify our policy asks and to raise issues when required.
While this role is focused on political engagement, you will work closely with policy and research colleagues and with our communications team to share perspectives on which priorities it may be tactical to pursue at any given time and to understand what evidence is available to inform engagement.
You will also work closely with public affairs professionals in other organisations to deliver joint programmes of engagement work which leverage respective organisational strengths.
You will have excellent political instincts and a strong interest in policy developments, monitoring closely what is going on in Parliament and in Government, and keeping abreast of the latest developments in order to identify opportune moments to maximise political attention on the issues we work on and to galvanise support for policy change.
You will work with our communications team to build compelling narratives targeted at different political stakeholders about the impacts of the food system on our diets, our health and our planet, and the need for evidence-based solutions. In the current parliamentary term we expect a major focus of activity to be on securing a White Paper and then A Bill on food system change.
You will lead on developing and commissioning a range of briefing materials and reports for policy audiences and formulate responses on behalf of the organisation to policy development processes and Parliamentary inquiries.
You will think creatively about methods and opportunities for engagement in order to ensure that The Food Foundation s messages and priorities are noticed and heard by policy-makers in a very crowded policy space, including by working closely with our events manager to deliver impactful parliamentary events.
You will bring a learning mindset to the role, assessing the impact of our policy engagement approaches in order to make continuous improvements.
The role will be a fulfilling blend of planning engagement campaigns, developing the materials and monitoring tools to enable delivery, and the practical task of developing personal relationships with key stakeholders.
A week in the job will look like: meeting with a Peer that is new to our work to brief them on evidence we have published and our current political priorities, completing a political stakeholder mapping exercise for a new campaign on sustainable diets to identify a shortlist of MPs to engage with, spending an afternoon in parliament to engage informally with passing MPs, pitching a new idea for a parliamentary inquiry to parliamentary staff from the Health and Social Care Committee, drafting an MP briefing for an upcoming debate on the Government s obesity prevention priorities, reviewing next week s parliamentary calendar to spot opportunities for engagement, attending a roundtable to share intelligence and discuss priorities for political party manifestos with other NGOs working on food issues, ringing round parliamentary offices to confirm attendance for an upcoming parliamentary reception, meeting with an MP that is closely involved with The Food Foundation s work to refine messaging for an upcoming campaign.