Suzanne Roberts Email & Phone Number

Stirling

Leading the Communications Team at Keep Scotland Beautiful, I am responsible for ensuring the strategic direction of our external communications through appropriate channels and to the right audiences. I work with our in-house digital designer and communications officer to ensure our communications plan, trading plan and strategy objectives are fulfilled.I am a member of Management Team, responsible for strategic and business planning, policy development, political and stakeholder engagement, research, evaluation and reporting.Core responsibilities:- Working with the CEO and Deputy CEO alongside our Charity Trustees to provide strategic and operational communications support and advice to members of #TeamKSB so we can inspire, influence and encourage collaboration through our stories. - Coordinating our media output including in house production of media releases, social media planning and content, communications plans, campaign support and evaluation.- Ghost blog writing- Liaising with external contractors and service providers.- Additional line management responsibility for Grant & Trust Officer, Marketing Officer and a Internships as and when funding allows.Examples of recent projects- Impact report 2022/23- Cup Movement in the Highlands- Launch of Our Strategy- Bringing our media release writing / issuing function back in house after a period of working with an external agency.

I was responsible for the management and coordination of the delivery team, associated volunteers and supporters ensuring our range of national campaigns, projects and awards programmes were successfully run. This included the control and management of programme budgets, capacity planning and resource allocation as well as supporting the team.Core responsibilities:- Drafting tenders, grant applications, and commercial pitches.- Being an action member of the charity's Management TeamExamples of projects- Working as part of a team on the bid for funding for a Roadside Litter campaign, securing funding and working with a design agency to deliver concept and deploy the campaign.- Feeding in to the International Clean Europe Network working groups on Aquatic Litter.- Contributing to the creation of Scotland's first Marine Litter Strategy and sitting on the working group.

Continuing on from my work as an officer, I took on coordination responsibilities for three full time campaign officers and three office based volunteers to build and deliver our campaigns and activities.I was responsible for budgeting, strategic project planning and supporting the team to run the national community growing initiatives – Beautiful Scotland, It’s Your Neighbourhood, our newly launched Clean Up Scotland campaign and the longstanding award schemes for parks and beaches – Seaside Award and Blue Flag and Green Flag Award for parks.Examples of projects- Development of service hub offering- Volunteer Policy and Proceedure development- Growth of international Green Flag Award in Scotland.

I was responsible for the day to day co-ordination and delivery of our campaigns and award schemes - including Beautiful Scotland, It's Your Neighbourhood, Scotland's Beach Awards and Spring Clean. This included database management, reporting to funders, and providing a wide range of volunteer and local authority officer support. Other duties include delivering a social media strategy, utilising a website content management as well as organising and representing Keep Scotland Beautiful at events.I provided regular face to face, telephone and e-mail support to the volunteer network of assessors, judges and entrants, organising the judges for assessments, and supporting the team as necessary to coordinate national celebration events.Examples of projects- I scoped out and drafted the original concept for our Clean Up Scotland initiative – to include all aspects of what we do at Keep Scotland Beautiful across our strands of work. The campaign was launched in 2014 with an initial focus on litter.

I led the Litter and Flytipping Team to ensure a contract with Zero Waste Scotland was brought in on time and in budget.Core responsibilities:• Utilised a job costing system, to monitor and provide financial progress reports when required and assisted with the preparation and negotiation of future contract proposals and budgets.• Compiled monthly, quarterly and annual project reports highlighting contract reviews when needed.• Maintained positive working relationships with members of the Scottish networking forums; The Transport Litter Group and The Flytipping Forum; and the UK Chewing Gum Action Group and National Fly Tipping Prevention Group.• Provided support for local authorities, duty bodies, and members of the public on local environmental quality issues, specifically litter and flytipping.• Proactively enhanced and developed Keep Scotland Beautiful’s reputation with key litter and flytipping stakeholders in Scotland, and across the UK.Examples of projects:• Small Flytipping Grants Scheme: Development of grant criteria and application pack, co-ordination of scheme publicity, management of enquiries and applications, shortlisting of applications, organisation of grant panel, distribution of £76,000 in grants, monitoring of successful applicants, writing of case studies and project report all on time.• Flytipping seminar: Event organisation and promotion, speaker and delegate management, compiling seminar report.• Transport litter day of action: Co-ordination of a successful National Day of Action with local authorities, road operators, rail operators to raise awareness of roadside litter, its cost and safety implications.• Transport litter monitoring: Survey of 15% of Scottish motorways and trunk roads for compliance with the Code of Practice for Litter and Refuse, and quantitative survey of key recyclable items. Reports written and information used in national media release.

I developed and delivered the charity’s coastal campaigns - increasing the number of award winning beaches in Scotland from 16 - 70 - and establishing and coordinating Scotland's first Beach Managers Forum. Additionally I was responsible for securing a positive and high profile for the litter and flytipping campaigns we ran across print and broadcast media.Core responsibilities:• Led on the communications plan and calendar for the charity, specifically the litter and flytipping activities. • Writing media releases, fielding media enquiries, briefing staff; including the management team and Chief Executive, organising media training for employees, and compiling monthly, quarterly and annual evaluation reports.• Managing contracts with external providers.• Keeping policies and views on relevant local environmental issues accurate, up to date.• Maintaining the media centres and ensuring web page news stories were current and fresh.• Developing and coordinating social media plans.Examples of projects:• Risk Assessment training: Working with the RLSS we ran a series of national training events to ensure beach managers across Scotland were equipped with knowledge to risk assess award winning beaches.• Communications strategy: I developed a strategic communications strategy, including policy guidance and ‘how to deal with the media’ guide, which was utilised by staff and led to the later development of a specific flytipping communications strategy and a fundraising communications strategy.• Social networking: I was responsible for establishing a Keep Scotland Beautiful presence on social networking sites including Twitter and Facebook; setting the scene for future development to take place.

Fife Coast and Countryside Trust is a registered environmental charity which manages, conserves and enhances the biodiversity and countryside of Fife.I represent Keep Scotland Beautiful as a Partner Director on the Board of Charity Trustees. I am joint Vice-Chair and chair the Communications and Fundraising Sub Group.

This post was a three-year secondment from Scottish Water to Keep Scotland Beautiful.Core responsibilities:• To co-ordinate the Clean Coast Scotland network – organising quarterly steering group meetings with representatives from national and local government, charities, pressure groups, communities and the tourism sector and delivering the action plan.• To publicise the work of the Clean Coast Scotland partners and their efforts to improve bathing water quality and enhance the coastal environment to a wide range of community groups through presentations, newsletters and media engagement.Examples of projects:• Save the North Sea Project: Working with partners from across Europe to deliver the International EU Interegg IIIB funded project, Save the North Sea, to reduce marine litter. I was responsible for promoting the campaign across Scotland, to ensure the project finances and activity reports were complete and worked with PR Agency Weber Shandwick on the award-winning coverage of the campaign in the UK.• Bag it and Bin it: Preparation, submission and progression of a £50,000 funding bid to Scottish Government for a media campaign to promote the educational campaign to reduce the amount of sanitary waste flushed down toilets.

I played a key role providing external communications support as part of an inhouse team to the delivery teams and the CEO function. Roles included writing media releases, dealing with media enquiries, developing and delivering communications plans, supporting planning of / and attending press launches and public consultation events, copy writing publications, supporting emergency planning and communications management of incidents, dealing with out of hours reactive crisis media management and planning, executing and evaluating communications campaigns including ‘Bag it and Bin it’ Winter warm pipes’ and ‘Clean Coast Scotland’.

Sourcing and writing general news stories, covering court cases and writing of advertising features.

Education record

Bachelor Of Science (Bsc), Marine Biology And Environmental Science

Education record