Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)

LOCATION: Defra has hub offices in Newcastle, York, London and Bristol. 

NUMBER OF PLACEMENTS: 2 

SALARY: London £29,770. National £26,025

Grade: AO

JOB DESCRIPTION:

Economists in Defra work to structure policy problems and ensure economic analysis informs decision making, making best use of available data and evidence.  You’ll work alongside colleagues from a variety of professions such as policy, science, statistics, operational research, and social research. 

For more information on the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs see our website.

Defra is offering summer placements across a range of areas including:

• Environmental Quality: developing policies and approaches around activities that can impact on environmental outcomes, including measures to improve air quality, regulations on use of chemicals and pesticides and policies on waste management.

• Farming and Countryside: helping develop future domestic agricultural policy for the UK. The team sits alongside statisticians, natural and social scientists and operational researchers and is an integral part of the policy development process.  

• Floods and Water: refining water environment regulation, working on economic regulation of the water utility sector including ongoing market reform, and costs, benefits and incentive issues around managing flood risk.

• Marine and Fisheries: developing a new policy framework for the fishing industry outside of the EU and working to develop systems to manage the marine environment more sustainably. 

• Natural Environment, Trees and Landscapes: developing policies around the contribution that land use management can make to wider environmental outcomes (including carbon storage, air & water quality, flood management and nature conservation) and supporting development of the rural economy. 

• International Biodiversity and Climate: working on issues including International Biodiversity & Environmental Agreements, International Strategy & ODA Management and Domestic & EU Wildlife Policy (ivory ban & Overseas Territories).

Placement students may be involved in a range of work such as conducting and advising on analysis, synthesis of available evidence, stakeholder engagement, reporting on outputs or addressing policy needs through testing and application of advanced models.

Placement Offer

All candidates will be offered a role based on merit. Location preference will be taken into consideration but is not guaranteed.

Please note that for candidates who wish to be based in London, candidates are required to have a UK footprint of 3 years and no period longer than 3 months outside of the UK in order to obtain the necessary get security clearance.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check and complete Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) checks before they start work. Read more information about pre-employment checks.

If a member of staff needs access to sensitive information or assets, they will need to undergo a more extensive security check. This is called National Security Vetting (NSV) clearance.

NSV involves a range of background checks. The nature of these checks depends on what level of security clearance a member of staff needs. NSV is designed to confirm how suitable the member of staff is to hold a certain level of vetting.

The type of security clearance needed depends on:

• your job or role

• your location (the building you work in)

Please note, those who wish to be based in London will be required to complete National Security Vetting (NSV) clearance at Counter Terrorist Check (CTC) level.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals

• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK

• nationals of the Republic of Ireland

• nationals from the EU, EEA or Switzerland with settled or pre-settled status or who apply for either status by the deadline of the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)

• relevant EU, EEA, Swiss or Turkish nationals working in the Civil Service

• relevant EU, EEA, Swiss or Turkish nationals who have built up the right to work in the Civil Service

• certain family members of the relevant EU, EEA, Swiss or Turkish nationals

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

For more information about the Economist Summer Placement Scheme in Defra please contact analyst.admin@defra.gov.uk