Closing date: 07 July 2024

London Borough of Hounslow

Specialist Planning and Projects Lawyer

Salary: £68,439 - £81,815 Per Annum

Contact: Rachel.McKoy@hounslow.gov.uk

Job Description:

About us at Hounslow

We’d love you to join us at the London Borough of Hounslow! Our people are deeply committed to providing excellent services to our residents, doing all we can to make lives as good as they can be.
We are an outstanding council, serving an outstanding borough. With brilliant, visionary leadership, a dynamic Cabinet and a can-do culture, we’ve built strong partnerships which have transformed how we serve one of London’s most diverse boroughs. Hounslow is the world in one place and full of potential. We are stepping up for our residents like never before.

About our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

We live by five core values: Lead with Heart, Do New, Pass on the Power, Harness the Mix and Be a Rock. All our work has equality, diversity and inclusion at its very heart, best articulated in “Harness the Mix”. It's about breaking down barriers between our parts and people and unlocking the problem-solving power of our amazing mix of minds. We serve a diverse community, we have a diverse workforce and we are committed to being an inclusive employer.
We work hard to create representation across our workforce and leadership community, we have thriving employee network groups and our learning and development programmes help us lead, model and breathe ways of working that eliminate inequality, inequity, injustice and bias.
As part of this and under our commitments as a Disability Confident Employer, we make reasonable adjustments to accommodate our candidates. There’s space for you to tell us what you need within our application form.

Our Benefits

If you join us, you’ll have access to a range of employee benefits. Read more about these here.

About The Role

If you’re a highly motivated legal professional, we would like to hear from you! This role presents the opportunity to join our recently created “Legal Hub” anchored within the Finance & Resources Directorate.

This newly created fee-earning created role will bolster our commercial function. You’ll be provided with the scope to work collaboratively in partnership with Directorates, Members, and key stakeholders, across boundaries, within the organisation.

Your time will be dedicated to the provision of legal advice and support, and not management, as you will be given freedom to do what you’ve trained for.

Key Responsibilities

1.You will be responsible for the conduct of a mixed and dynamic caseload across the spectrum of planning, property, and regeneration in a fee-earning capacity.

2.You will provide pragmatic, practical, and reasoned legal advice to clients, elected members and senior officers, which is reflective of the respective audiences.

3.You will demonstrate full adherence to the Hounslow values and be open to new ways of working.

4.You may be required to attend Hounslow’s Planning Committees (as necessary).

About The Team You’ll Be Working In

This is an in-house legal team which supports the Council’s commercial and governance arrangements rooted at the centre of the organisation. It is independent of the Council’s shared legal services arrangement with HBPL.Working within a progressive environment, you will be provided with the professional investment to flourish. We are genuinely interested in passionate individuals who care about their colleagues and are committed to making a positive difference to the communities we serve.

About You

If the points below resonate with you, we’d love you to put in an application:

1.Demonstrable commercial acumen and ability to produce clear and concise legal advice.

2.You will be politically experienced and able to demonstrate your ability to work successfully in a political context.

3.You’ll have strong experience of developing excellent client relationships against the backdrop of tricky legal and/or governance related issues.

4.Negotiating and influencing will come as second nature.

Read more about the work you’ll be doing in the Role Profile.

When Interviews Will Be Held And Who To Contact

The key information you need about the role should be in the Role Profile, but if you have any further questions about the role, please contact:

Email: Rachel.McKoy@hounslow.gov.uk

Telephone: 07929755551

Interviews for this job will be held during week commencing 15th July 2024.