Head of Legal Services
Location: Hatton Garden, London, EC1N 8JS or Nottingham, NG9 1LA with travel to London required
Salary Banding: London £85,294 - £89,783 - Nottingham £76,765 - £80,805
12-month fixed term interim role - 37.5hr week - Agile working to be discussed at interview stage.
Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing is one of the UK’s leading providers of affordable housing and care and support services. We employ over 1900 people to manage and develop our large portfolio of nearly 60,000 homes and work with our customers across London, the East Midlands, and Southern and Eastern England.
We’re seeking an experienced Head of Legal Services to lead our passionate in-house team, driving excellence in social housing law and contributing to our future approach on key issues and services.
You will provide expert advice on complex housing and property matters, with a focus on tenancy and leasehold litigation, and new the impact of new legislation in these areas. You’ll lead a team providing a high-quality service on both routine ‘volume’ matters and more complex cases, ensuring high quality client care for your internal customers in our housing and property teams.
Most of the 15-strong team are based at our offices in Farringdon, London, and regularly work together in person. You can also be based at our office in Beeston, Nottingham, but regular time in London will be needed, especially in the first few months.
Key Responsibilities
* Lead and develop a high-performing legal team.
* Provide strategic advice on housing litigation and property law.
* Deliver training and share legal expertise across the organisation.
* Ensure cost-effective legal services and compliance with regulations.
* Deliver strong value for money across all aspects of legal work in your control and drive continuous improvement.
About You
* Qualified solicitor or barrister with 7+ years PQE.
* Strong experience in housing law, ideally in a housing provider or local government environment.
* Excellent leadership, communication, and drafting skills.
* Ability to manage change and work across a large, complex organisation.
For an informal conversation with the hiring manager (no agencies, please), contact Katie Simpson on katie.simpson@mtvh.co.uk who will make arrangements.
To meet our commitment to providing safe, high-quality service we will complete a basic background check with the Disclosure and Barring service once an offer of employment is made. As this is part of MTVH's onboarding process the cost will be paid for by the organisation and a new check performed every three years.
Please note :- we do not currently offer visa sponsorship.
What’s in it for you?
Our benefits include:-
* 28 days annual leave plus 8 bank holidays (pro rata for part time) per year
* 2 volunteering days per year for things like helping out in local communities
* An additional ‘Beliefs day’ once a year to have an extra a day off
* Supported family friendly approach with extended parental leave
* Enhanced pension with matched contributions of up to 9%
* Option to buy or sell up to 5 days annual leave per year
* Life assurance cover 3 x your salary
* Cycle2work scheme
* Hybrid Working - Dependent on job role and department
* Health cash plan scheme for your everyday healthcare needs which you can add your family members too
* Tenancy deposit – interest free loan to help with rental deposits and season Ticket loan
* Access to extensive learning and training opportunities with Wisebox platform
* Colleague virtual social platform with our workplace pages where you can keep up to date with the organisational activity and link in with colleagues
* Career progression across the organisation with our mentoring/coaching programmes, apprenticeships and career planning support
* Employee Assistance Programme- We are committed to the wellbeing of our colleagues and support this as an organisation
About us
We are committed to developing and implementing or maintaining sustainability initiatives to reduce environmental impact and promote sustainable practices within MTVH.
Learn more about our benefits and organisation by viewing our attached document
Our promise
Here at Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing (MTVH) we want to capture the value that difference brings and are committed to promoting equality, diversity and inclusion. We work collaboratively ‘Serving people better every day’ to educate, support and develop all of our diverse employees and the communities that we serve. We are also part of the disability confident employer scheme.
We want every employee and every customer to feel comfortable enough to be their true self and are working tirelessly in the background to create an environment that encourages our employees to challenge non-inclusive behaviours and to be mindful of their own and other’s wellbeing.
We provide a platform of Network groups for employees to share views, tell us what we’re doing well and recommend improvements. We want to create a real sense of community and a workforce who feel that their opinions are valued. Our Networks groups are:-
* Gender
* Ethnicity
* LGBTQ+
* Disability
Our core values of Dare, Care and Collaborate demonstrate that we are a people focused business, solving social issues by working together!
We reserve the right to close this vacancy early if a suitable candidate is found so we do encourage you to complete the application as soon as possible to avoid disappointment.
For a full breakdown of company benefits, please see the attached Benefits Digital Booklet: