Craft Gardener

Leicester Bus Partnership; Leicester; On-site; GBP 26,000 - 27,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible working

Local Government Pension Scheme

Generous annual leave

Discounts on city buses and trains

Job summary

Leicester City Council is seeking a dedicated Craft Gardener to join the grounds maintenance team at Abbey Park, with 37 hours per week. The role involves maintaining parks and green spaces across the city, using hand and mechanical equipment, and delivering high standards of customer service.

You will carry out horticultural work, operate equipment, and comply with COSHH and health and safety guidelines, with potential duties at other depots to meet service demands.

Qualifications

• COSHH regulations knowledge and health & safety awareness.
• Ability to carry out manual handling tasks safely.
• Good literacy and numeracy for paperwork and records.

Responsibilities

• Maintain horticultural and hard landscape features across parks.
• Prepare and apply chemicals in line with safety guidelines.
• Keep sites clean, tidy and well maintained, including sports features.
• Operate hand and mechanical equipment safely and effectively.
• Provide helpful customer advice to facility users.

Skills

COSHH regulations

Health & safety

Manual handling

Teamwork

Literacy & numeracy

Customer service

Tools

Hand and mechanical equipment

Job description

The job requirements are detailed below. Where applicable the skills, qualifications and memberships required for this job have also been included.

Job details

Job reference REQ8143 Date posted 14/08/2026 Application closing date 30/08/2026 Location Various locations across Leicester City Salary £25,583- £25,989 Per Year Package Total benefit value (includes pension contribution and full holiday entitlement):£35,437.77 Contractual hours 37 Basis Full time Job category/type City Services Attachments Job Specification - 2026-06-23T134659.892 (1).pdf

Full Time / 37 Hour Per Week / Permanent

Join our horticultural team to make improvements to the landscape of the city.

Leicester is covered by a wealth of soft and hard open spaces that includes a range of parks, gardens, country parks, nature areas,150,000 individual trees and 107 hectares of woodlands, canal, and riverside, 150 play and outdoor gym facilities, sports facilities, highways, and housing green spaces totalling 1,250 hectares. It is widely recognised that quality open spaces contribute to residents’ quality of life and improve physical and mental health wellbeing, with parks in Leicester attracting around 9 million visitors per annum.

Join our specialist team of Craft Gardeners to undertake high quality horticultural work and grounds maintenance work to maintain and further improve parks and open spaces and all other green infrastructure within the city of Leicester.

You’ll be based at Abbey Park although you may be required at other grounds maintenance depots as and when required to meet service demands.

This is a full-time, permanent position working 37 hours per week from Monday to Friday. You’ll be available to start the working day at 7:30am and when required, work outside of normal working hours including providing emergency cover for out of hours. You’ll be able to work outside in all weathers, anywhere in the city and wear PPE where appropriate.

What you'll be doing

You’ll work under the guidance of the Local Area Manager and Team Leader, to maintain horticultural features as well as hard landscape features including buildings. This includes preparing and applying chemicals, keeping sites clean and tidy, and maintaining sports features such as artificial surfaces. You’ll operate and maintain hand and mechanical specialist equipment in accordance with health and safety guidelines. You’ll be confident in providing advice to people using our facilities to ensure a high standard of customer service is achieved.

What you’ll need

With previous experience in either horticulture or groundsmanship, you'll understand COSHH regulations and have knowledge of health & safety. You'll have the ability to carry out manual handling and lifting heavy equipment and materials. You’ll be able to work without close supervision, whilst using your own initiative as well as working well in a team environment. You’ll be a highly safety conscious individual in the day-to-day tasks especially when using specialist equipment. Using good literacy and numeracy skills you’ll complete relevant paperwork, and ensure records are accurate and up to date.

A full driving licence is essential as you will be required to carry out driving duties.

What we can offer you

As well as the satisfaction of helping to improve thousands of lives across Leicester, you can lookforward to a work environment that encourages a healthy work/life balance. You’ll enjoy generousannual leave, membership of the Local Government Pension Scheme and the option of flexibleworking. We’ll also give you the chance to develop your skills and expertise with a variety of trainingand development opportunities. In addition, you can choose fromseveralflexible benefits,including discounts on city buses and trains. Foran illustrative value of your benefits package,take a look at ourbenefits calculator.

We’re committed to recruiting a diverse and highly-talented workforce as we continue to build acouncil that is fitting and representative of our great city. That’s why we’ve designed ourrecruitment process to put you at your ease, make you feel welcome and bring the best out of you.We’ll do all we can to make our recruitment process as fair as possible. To help you with yourapplication,take a look at the ‘our approach to recruitment’ page.

If you’d like a chat about this post, feel free to contact to Mark Humphrey by email to [e-mail] or call 0116 454 3774.