Transport and Physical Activity Strategic Lead

Organisation: Active Black Country
Salary: £45,000
Location: Halesowen, West Midlands
Contract type: Fixed Term (Full time)
Closing date: 5 September 2025
Interview date: 17 September 2025
Job Description: Active Black Country is part of the national network of Active Partnerships.

We are principally funded by Sport England to work with local partners to create opportunities for people to be physically active, move more, and play sport.

We work with a diverse range of partners and manage several grant funding programmes and projects that aim to create opportunities for local people in the Black Country to be active.

About the role

The purpose of the Transport and Physical Activity Lead is to work in partnership with the four Transport Teams across the Black Country to integrate physical activity into Transport planning and delivery.

The role will focus on supporting the implementation of the Black Country Walking and Cycling Infrastructure Plan (BC LCWIP), ensuring localised improvements are considered further to ensure connectivity between communities and the active travel infrastructure being delivered.

The purpose of the Transport and Physical Activity Lead is to work in partnership with the four Transport Teams across the Black Country to integrate physical activity into Transport planning and delivery.

The role will focus on supporting the implementation of the Black Country Walking and Cycling Infrastructure Plan (BC LCWIP), ensuring localised improvements are considered further to ensure connectivity between communities and the active travel infrastructure being delivered.

The role will have responsibility for developing understanding of the walking and cycling landscape and community need.

The role will understand how the BC LCWIP needs to be able to capitalise on both available and emerging funding opportunities to help deliver the cycling and walking vision for the area. The funding, however, is not only limited to the delivery of infrastructure but also to ensuring the right resources and skills are in place to support local activation.

1. Be the lead advocate for the integration of physical activity with Black Country Transport to decrease physical inactivity and support health, environmental and economic outcomes.
2. Drive approaches to place-based work with local partners to support a whole system approach to integrating physical activity into transport policy & services.
3. Lead the development of high-quality relationships which enable a collaborative focus on local transport assets, interventions, initiatives, programmes and activities which create opportunities for people to be active and tackle physical inactivity.
4. Work with appointed strategic and learning leads respectively alongside other suppliers on the Sport England recognised ‘Place Based’ investment in the Black Country.
5. Work with transport leads from the four Black Country authorities to develop understanding of local people & communities, the needs, opportunities, and challenges of communities to be active and how this understanding can be used to strengthen partnerships and yield influence to integrate services.
6. Coordinate the development of Local Cycling & Walking Infrastructure plans (LCWIP) that support the implementation of local priorities to improve outcomes and tackle inequalities in physical activity levels.
7. Establish and/or maintain effective multi-partner place networks and related forums to support connectivity of assets across the Black Country landscape particularly the canal infrastructure to influence co-design opportunities for walking and cycling.
8. Provide regular reports as required on the progress of the implementation of programmes, in line with established key performance indicators.
9. Working to the Monitoring Evaluation and Learning Framework to extract learnings and share good practice.
10. Ensuring compliance at all times with contract management, procurement and finance procedures.
11. To be responsible and take reasonable care for the Health, Safety and Welfare of self and other employees and the public in accordance with Health and Safety Legislation and company procedures.
12. To adhere to the Data Protection Act at all times. Confidentiality must be maintained at all times.
13. To adhere to all relevant policies and procedures at all times.
14. To undertake such other duties as may be appropriate

Person Specification:

Transport:
Experience of the transport sector, ideally with experience of influencing priorities and using physical activity as a tool to support wider outcomes.
Contemporary knowledge of transport, health & wellbeing policies & strategies.
Can articulate, demonstrate, or evidence the valuable role that physical activity and sport can contribute to environmental & socio-economic outcomes.

Place-based work:
Proven experience supporting specific communities or localities—particularly in roles involving community development or collaborative partnerships, ideally across the Black Country, to develop propositions that respond to strategic need.

Partnership and relationship building:
Able to work as a trusted partner and build strong, effective, and valued relationships across a wide range of people and organisations.
Visibly values and promotes co-design and can bring people together to jointly create innovative ideas and practice.
Skilled in building trust and long-term relationships across sectors—especially with local partners, community-based organisations, local authorities and charities.

Systems change understanding:
Has skills, knowledge and good experience of partnership working to build strong, effective, and valued relationships, across a wide range of people and organisations to influence & develop collaborative agendas.
Able to work with complexity and influence and advocate for learning beyond programme delivery.
Proven experience in using learning as a driver for change.

Impact and learning:
Skilled at applying evidence led approaches to design interventions that can support a range of socio-economic outcomes.
Strong understanding of how to track, assess, and learn from outcomes in complex, multistakeholder projects with defined output requirements.

Equity and inclusion:
Deep commitment to inclusive practice, with experience applying in real-world settings.
Demonstrates professional, voluntary, or lived experience of communities most marginalised or under-represented in being active. Has knowledge and understanding of the barriers to activity.

Communication:
Strong written and verbal skills, able to distil learning clearly for different audiences, including communities, partners, and funders.

Initiative and adaptability:
A self-starter who shows skills in agile and adaptive working proving they can respond quickly, work flexibly and navigate through fast-paced, changing, complex and uncertain environments.
How to apply: To find out more information and to apply please visit the Active Black Country Website: https://www.activeblackcountry.co.uk/news/vacancy-transport-and-physical%20activity%20strategic%20lead/ To apply: 1. Please submit an up to date CV and an expression of interest explaining why you are interested in this role, detailing how you are a good candidate for this post and how you fulfil the person specification – we recommend that this is no longer than two pages. 2. The declaration form – but completion of the equalities section is not mandatory, this is requested for monitoring purposes in line with our commitment to equality and diversity. 3. Please submit your expression to enquiries@Activeblackcountry.co.uk Closing date: 5 September, 2025. Interviews will be held 17 & 18 September 2025.