Competitive pay you can count on
Our salary and pay structure is designed to be fair, transparent, and rewarding. As part of a local authority, we follow nationally agreed pay scales, giving you clarity and security about your earnings and progression. You’ll benefit from competitive rates, regular incremental increases, and opportunities to advance as your career grows. Plus, with enhancements like overtime options, allowances, and salary sacrifice schemes, you can make the most of your hard work while planning for a secure future.
Time for you
A healthy work-life balance is all about having quality time away from your job, so you can focus on your personal life.
- We offer a range of flexible and hybrid working options to help you balance work and personal commitments. This includes reduced and compressed hours or you can change your start and finish times to fit around other responsibilities. Many of our team members also enjoy hybrid working, so they can chose to balance working from home with our office bases in the Lake District.
- Our Flexitime scheme enables you to accrue credit which can be taken as flexi leave for those unexpected appointments or to take time off at a later date.
- We’re committed to supporting our staff to volunteer and donate their time and skills in the community to volunteer for up to three workdays per year.
- Whats more, we have other paid and unpaid leave options in place, such as time off for public duties or purchasing annual leave.
Holidays and leave
Your holiday entitlement is between 23 and 29 days annual leave depending on your length of service. On top of this, you’re also entitled to 10 additional days bank holiday and statutory days. If you join us from another local authority or eligible government body you may be entitled to retain your length of service and be entitled to a higher annual leave amount.
Holiday entitlement for our Chief Executive and Directors is 30 days plus 10 additional days bank holiday and statutory days.
Our offices and depots close down for Christmas week, and work resumes in the new year.
Secure your retirement
Paying into a pension is one of the best ways to plan for your future—and we’re proud to offer the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS). This is a salary-related, defined benefit scheme, meaning your pension is guaranteed and not affected by stock market changes or investment performance.
You’ll be automatically enrolled, and we’ll make a significant employer contribution to help your savings grow. Each scheme year, your pension is calculated to reflect the cost of living now and when you retire, giving you peace of mind and long-term security for you and your loved ones.
You can also increase your monthly pension contributions, or chose to pay less, but remain in the scheme.
A smart way to access benefits
- Did you know that your monthly pension contributions are deducted before tax and NI? By increasing your monthly pension contribution, you may pay less tax and NI in your monthly salary by saving more for the future.
- If you chose to purchase annual leave, you’ll repay the difference in 12 monthly payments before all other deductions.
- Our Cycle to Work scheme enables you to get a bike and accessories by repaying through monthly or pre-taxed payments. You can borrow between £100 and £4,000 - that’s enough to cover many electric bikes available on the market.
- Lease an Electric Vehicle (EV) without deposits and enjoy emissions free driving while saving money.
Mind and body matters
Staff health and wellbeing are important to us and we offer a range of benefits that support you in and out of work:
- Our Employee Assistance helps you manage personal or professional challenges. You can access free, confidential counselling from qualified professionals on emotional, legal, or health-related issues.
- Our staff Mental Health First Aiders can spot signs of mental ill-health and provide initial support—just like physical first aiders respond to injury or illness.
- Save through our health cash plan and claim back money on essential healthcare costs including dental check-ups, eye care and physiotherapy.
- We also provide access to occupational health services for workplace assessments. This ensures you have the right support and adjustments to stay healthy at work.
Unlock your potential
We recognise the importance of training and developing staff whether this is to improve skills and knowledge, ensure legal compliance or supporting into higher roles. As well as providing a mandatory training package for everyone, there are opportunities to develop and progress your career or personal growth. Appraisals and one to ones are times to agree and discuss requests with your line manager.
All employees are given a thorough induction and on the job training as well as putting together an initial development plan with the line manager. Each post may also require additional mandatory training (such as chainsaw use or first aid).
We encourage Continuous Professional Development (CPD) and also support you to attend away days and conferences so you’ll be up to date with your industry and networking with fellow professionals.
Our e-learning platform has a large number of modules, which has been collated especially for all our national parks nationwide. Modules can be beneficial for professional and personal development.
We have provided financial assistance and time off for staff to take professional studies which are related to their role.
Internal secondments cover temporary or fixed term vacancies to give valuable opportunities for development and gaining experience. ‘Acting up’ can be applied if a staff member carries out duties and responsibilities at a higher grade, thus gaining experience as well as increase in salary.
Thank you
Reward and recognition reinforces the Lake District National Park’s strategic vision by recognising contributions or behaviour that supports its goals and objectives. It is important that our employees work in an environment where they are valued and where outstanding achievement and performance is recognised.
- As well as our annual staff conference, we have Team and Service away days in the national park. Our Ranger-led Ways of Walking staff events are very popular. Staff can sign up to a guided walk, where one of our Area Rangers show and tell you about a land based project they’ve been working on in the national park.
- Line managers often recognise individuals or team performance and values with gifts such as extra annual leave, gift cards or an afternoon tea in the Lakes.
- Financial awards and honoraria can recognise outstanding performance, work on a project, going above and beyond or successfully passing a qualification.
- As part of a celebration of time working with us, we gift all staff a tax free financial payment to treat themselves.
