Countryside & Conservation Officer
Hillingdon Council

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My name’s Jenny and I’m a countryside and conservation

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officer for the London borough of Hillingdon.

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A countryside and conservation officer

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is basically a parks manager, effectively.

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So we cover the day-to-day maintenance for the park.

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So we cover everything from grass cutting all the way through to river clean ups.

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We do volunteering days, we do lots of surveying for wildlife,

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we do tree cutting, we do lots of different things.

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We basically just want to make the parks and open spaces as nice as they can be.

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I think the best thing about my job is the fact that I get to be outside

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all the time.

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I’m a keen runner, so I do like to also combine

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my running with site visits occasionally, which is great.

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So the worst part about my job is probably having to deal with the issues

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that some members of the public can cause, such as broken

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fencing or stealing things or dumping large amounts of waste

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in parks, which can be kind of annoying, expensive, time-consuming.

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Just not very nice to be a part of.

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Organisation is key and kind of

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understanding the work that you’re… the parks that you’re in

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and understanding how you can look forward to the future.

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Understanding that stuff happens over time, stuff changes.

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Flexibility works really well

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because I think you have to be able to adapt.

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When your situations change.

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So if, for instance, we get flooding in a park,

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we then have to decide how’s best to manage that.

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I picked ICT, geography

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and French for my GCSEs.

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And then my A-levels,

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I chose ICT, geography and biology.

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Geography was actually the one

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that pinpointed me most in the section that I’m doing now.

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So we did some river

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courses and so we
got our little wellies on

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and we went into the river and we were doing lots of sampling.

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And I use that

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probably more, most, out of all the work that I do.

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My first job was

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kitchen designing at Homebase and selling furniture.

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And so I did that until I was 23. Yeah.

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So I dipped in and out when I was coming back from uni.

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I did that. Because I wasn’t sure if university was for me because I really,

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really enjoyed earning lots of lovely money.

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So I thought, I’m not sure if I want to do this or not.

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So I took a year out and then after the year where I was doing

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the kitchen designing, I thought, no, I want to explore a bit more.

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And I want to meet new people and I want to explore a subject a bit more.

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So yeah, I went back to university and I covered biological science.

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And so I did a degree course called ecology,

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which is basically like environment biology, effectively.

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So you learn a lot about nature and you learn a lot about

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wildlife and all sorts of lovely, lovely, interesting things, yeah.

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I think it helps to have a job role that is customer-facing

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in order to kind of understand

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how to talk to people and how you would want to be talked to as well.

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At the age of 23, I then got another job, so

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I was working for a firm that did tree cutting.

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So I did that job for about four years and then I joined the council

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because I wanted a bit more –

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I wanted a change.

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I was fed up of all the driving I was doing, like commuting.

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And this job with the council – because it was where my parents live

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so I knew the borough really, really well –

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and work for a team, for a local council. And that is exactly how it is.

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Yeah.

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The advice I think I would give to someone who is not sure what they want to do

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would be just to choose something you enjoy.

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Ultimately, that is what you want to do.