Working for Stroud District Council

Welcome from our Chief Executive

Thank you for your interest in working for Stroud District Council.

It’s a great place to work. We are a friendly, welcoming team, passionate about the work that we do to make a positive difference for the communities we serve.  We place our communities at the heart of everything we do, and work to continuously improve the services we provide for our residents, tenants and businesses. We care about each other too, and are known for our positive approach to flexible working, our family-friendly policies, and our commitment to the health and wellbeing of our staff and to equality, diversity and inclusion.

Stroud District Council has an impact on everyone who lives in, works in or visits our district. We look after the natural and built environment, support our thriving market towns and businesses, and work hard to strengthen our communities. We are probably best known for our green credentials. We were one of the first councils in the UK to declare a climate emergency in 2018, have also declared an ecological emergency, and we have a strategy and action plan to help us achieve our goal of becoming a carbon neutral district by 2030. We became the first carbon neutral council in Europe in 2015, and the work that we are now doing with our partners and passionate communities is helping us to cut waste, improve recycling, make better use of renewable energy and promote active travel in our area. We also have an ambitious plan to retrofit our council houses - we provide and maintain over 5,500 homes for over 11,000 tenants.

As well as council houses, we own a lot of buildings and assets including two fabulous leisure centres, a fantastic museum, attractive parks and playgrounds, commercial buildings and a great pub alongside the canal. The multi-million pound restoration of the Thames-Severn Canal that crosses the district is one of our flagship and award-winning partnership regeneration schemes. Another is the redevelopment of Brimscombe Port, once an inland port on the canal, where we are restoring the canal basin and creating a community around it. There is a strong community spirit  which is one of the reasons why Stroud itself was identified as the best place to live in the UK by the Sunday Times in 2021. Other factors were the popular Saturday Farmer’s Market and craft market, the range of independent shops and businesses on offer and of course the breathtaking natural environment that surrounds the town, set at the point where five river valleys meet and with the stunning views this entails, all the way across the River Severn to the Forest of Dean and Wales beyond. There are a other equally attractive towns – Painswick, Nailsworth, Dursley, Stonehouse and Wotton-under-Edge are our largest market towns and there are many historic settlements nestled in the natural landscape of the Cotswold escarpment and the Severn Vale. Stroud District really does provide something for everyone.

If this sounds like something you’d like to be part of, please take a look at the rest of the information on our website to see what we can offer you - we’d love to hear from you. 

Kathy O’Leary
Chief Executive