South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (SECAmb) has a vision to ‘support our staff to provide a caring, high quality and efficient urgent and emergency care service to our communities’. We are rated ‘Good’ for care by the Care Quality Commission and while the other areas under their most recent report require improvement, our aim is to continually improve and to reach outstanding across all areas of the Trust. Our 4,000 workforce provide services to 4.9m people across Kent, Surrey, Sussex and North East Hampshire. We handle over 1 million calls to 999 and 1 million calls to NHS 111 every year. More information regarding our services and locations can be found on our website. Job overview Head of Legal Services Band 8b | Full Time | Permanent Base: Trust Headquarters, Crawley (with travel across SECAmb sites) Are you an experienced legal professional with a passion for healthcare law and a commitment to improving patient safety and organisational governance? South East Coast Ambulance NHS Foundation Trust (SECAmb) is seeking a dynamic and highly skilled Head of Legal Services to lead our Legal Services team. About the Role As Head of Legal Services, you will provide expert legal advice across a broad range of healthcare-related matters, including clinical negligence, coroners’ inquests, personal injury claims, and complex ethical issues. You will act as a trusted advisor to the Trust’s Executive Team, senior clinicians, and operational leaders, ensuring legal compliance and supporting continuous improvement in patient safety and governance. Advert You will lead the legal management of inquests, including advocacy and witness support, and oversee the conduct of claims and litigation. You will also play a key role in identifying organisational learning from legal processes and contribute to policy development and internal training. Key Responsibilities Independently manage and advocate in coroners’ inquests. Provide expert legal advice on healthcare law, patient consent, capacity, confidentiality, and more. Lead the management of clinical negligence and personal injury claims. Support staff across the Trust with legal guidance and training. Collaborate with governance, safety, and clinical teams to embed learning and improve practice. Line manage legal services staff and oversee the department’s budget. What We’re Looking For Qualified solicitor barrister Extensive experience in healthcare law, litigation, and inquest advocacy. Strong leadership, communication, and analytical skills. Ability to manage complex caseloads and provide clear, strategic legal advice. Experience working within the NHS or public sector is desirable. Working for our organisation Option to join NHS pension scheme A minimum 27 days' holiday each year, increasing after 5 years’ service. Personal and professional development and training opportunities. Salary Sacrifice schemes for cars or push bikes. Access to occupational health and counselling services. Award winning wellbeing hub Access to NHS discounts, offering NHS employees a range of money-saving deals. Other than in exceptional circumstances, the starting salary for staff new to the NHS will be the bottom point of the band to which they have been appointed. Detailed job description and main responsibilities The post holder is responsible for the daily management of the Legal Services allocated budget and line management of legal services staff. Coroners Inquests Accountable for the effective legal conduct of all inquests involving the Trust, incuding adherence to professional standards of all Legal staff and compliance with evidentiary and Coronial rules by, Acting as a confident advocate, including the ability to examine and cross-examine witnesses, present evidence and make submissions to Coroners on relevant law. To understand the medical complexities of each case in conjunction with senior clinicians and recognise potentially problematic areas, both clinically and legally, which may require further investigation and reporting for the purposes of the inquest. To provide advice on the preparation and content of witness statements. To liaise with the Coroner and his/her Officers to meet the requirements of the Court. In exceptional cases to instruct Counsel where necessary. Ensuring close liaison with the patient safety team and divisional quality and clinical leads, highlighting areas of risk identified in inquests investigations to ensure that lessons learned in the claims and inquest process are implemented within the Trust. Legal Advice To ensure the provision of the highest level of prompt and accurate expert legal advice by: · Providing advice on matters including, but not limited to, patient consent, withholding/withdrawing of life sustaining treatment and end of life decisions, capacity, confidentiality, access to patient information, medical ethics, mental health law, trust law, contract law, criminal law, dealings with the police, child protection, occupier’s liability, interpretation of relevant legislation, legal principles and case law. Participating in and providing legal advice to Trust Working Groups and Committees in the development and implementation of policy, ensuring the Trust’s compliance with the relevant legal frameworks. Please note that the salary range noted on the vacancy is in line with agenda for change (AFC) pay scales. All successful applicants would be placed automatically at the bottom of the banding, unless proven, relevant NHS or equivalent experience can be demonstrated. Following the revision of current national legislation (Vaccine as a Condition of Deployment), the Trust has reviewed our requirements relating to staff uptake of the SARS-COV-2 (COVID-19) vaccination. Going forward, for patient facing positions, we strongly recommend that new starters will be appropriately vaccinated unless medically exempt in order to offer greater protection against exposure to the virus for front line staff. In line with this recommendation, if you are successful in your application for a front line post, we will seek information from you in relation to your vaccine status, including exemption status, as applicable. Please note, all positions come with a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check relevant to the post. This will either be a basic, standard, or enhanced check depending on the role. The level of check will be outlined in the conditional offer letter sent to successful applicants. As part of the application process, you will be asked to declare any unspent/unfiltered convictions. If you are shortlisted you will then be sent a self declaration form, which must be completed prior to attending interview. for any queries relating to declarations, please contact the Recruitment Advisor listed on the vacancy. The Trust is passionately committed to being an inclusive employer - a place where we can all be ourselves and succeed. As an employer we offer a range of family friendly, inclusive employment policies, flexible working arrangements, staff engagement networks, facilities and services to support staff from different backgrounds. We actively support equality of opportunity for all our staff and welcome applications from individuals regardless of age, any disability, sex, gender reassignment, sexual orientation, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief. The Trust is making progress towards its aim of becoming more reflective of the diversity of our community in our workforce and guarantees an interview to candidates with disability who meet the essential criteria specified. We particularly encourage applications from Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic and disabled applicants and those from other under-represented groups. The Equality Act 2010 protects disabled people - including those with long term health conditions, learning disabilities and hidden disabilities such as dyslexia. If you tell us that you have a disability we can make reasonable adjustments to ensure that any selection processes - including the interview - are fair and equitable. We are a committed to offering opportunities to individuals with disabilities and offer on-going support, should you be successful, with any adjustments you may need when performing your role. When completing the application please use your name as it appears on your passport and please ensure you include email addresses and contact numbers for your referees to avoid delay in the recruitment process. Please note that under our Trust policies, we're unable to employ anyone under the age of 18 years old. The majority of our roles will include some travel between sites for business purposes. If the vacancy you’re applying for includes work related travel, you will be required to ensure that you hold and have covered the cost of suitable car insurance to support this. Should you require an application form in an alternative format including large print or braille, please contact [email protected] stating the vacancy reference number and we will be happy to provide this. When completing the reference section, please include details to cover the last three years’ history. Due to the high volume of applications at SECAmb, we regret that we will only be able to contact those applicants who are shortlisted for interview. If you have not heard from us within 10 working days of the closing date, then please assume you have not been shortlisted for interview on this particular occasion. Please note that we contact all applicants via Trac Jobs and would advise you check your Trac Jobs account regularly. Please be aware that the Trust reserves the right to close this vacancy early if sufficient applications are received. For this reason we recommend completing your application as early as possible. Follow our recruitment on Twitter @SECAmbRecruit and check out our Facebook page - SECAmb NHS Recruitment. You can also find us on Linkedin under South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust. We understand that AI tools can be useful for generating ideas or structuring your application. However, any content submitted must reflect your own experiences, skills, and understanding. Applications that are generated wholly or in large part by AI, without personalisation or accuracy, may be excluded from consideration. We value honesty, authenticity, and integrity in the recruitment process and expect all applicants to uphold these principles. If you are a current SECAmb employee, by applying for this position, if successful you will move to the terms and conditions associated with the post. Any unsocial hours payments will be paid under the Section 2 agreement of agenda for change. Section 2 unsocial hours will need to be claimed via your monthly timesheet. More information regarding section 2 can be found in the Agenda for Change handbook and on the our dedicated Section 2 page on The Zon e .