Housing & Homelessness - Senior Legal Officer
Housing & Homelessness - Senior Legal Officer
We are seeking a highly skilled and motivated Legal Officer to join our Homelessness Service.
The successful candidate will be pivotal in providing high-quality legal oversight and support, focusing on housing and homelessness law. You will be responsible for managing and advising on legal matters related to judicial reviews, pre-action protocols, Section 204 reviews, and other housing-related issues. This includes handling a caseload of high-profile, complex, and sensitive legal matters with professionalism, confidentiality, and sensitivity. You will also provide expert legal advice and support to the Council’s Housing Options Service on various aspects of housing law, including Parts 6 and 7 of the Housing Act 1996, the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017, landlord and tenant law, anti-social behaviour (ASB), housing disrepair, leasehold advice, and service charges. Additionally, you will work closely with the service to ensure that all service provisions, staff, and processes remain lawful and legally compliant, safeguarding the Council against legal challenges and ensuring adherence to relevant legislation.
For a confidential discussion please contact Abul Kalam, abul.kalam@towerhamlets.gov.uk.
Equality, diversity, and inclusion.
We are proud of our diversity and our distinct and vibrant communities. Our borough has a history of welcoming migrants, which is reflected in our values. You will share the values of fairness and equality that are shared across all of our services.
Our offices
We offer brand new state-of-the-art offices in the heart of the east end with great transport connections. We are right next to Whitechapel Station, putting all of London within easy reach of the town hall.
Our benefits
Our employees are put on the Local Government Pension Scheme. This is a career average salary scheme, so your pension benefits are guaranteed and do not depend on how investments perform. We pay into the fund on your behalf.
We have a generous annual leave entitlement starting at 29 working days, rising to 33 days with 5+ years' service, in addition to bank holidays and an additional 3 days at Christmas.
We positively encourage flexible working and work life balance aimed at supporting individual employee requirements within the context of meeting service needs.
We have a number of money-saving schemes, including a rent deposit scheme (which offers staff an interest free loan to help pay rent deposits) and season ticket loan scheme (interest-free loans to help staff when purchasing travel season tickets).
Tower Hamlets vision for our borough is that: people are aspirational, independent and have equal access to opportunities; we are a borough that our residents are proud of and love to live in; and we are a dynamic, outcomes-based council using digital innovation and partnership working to respond to the changing needs of our borough. We want people who aspire to our TOWER values: Together; Open; Willing; Excellent; Respect.
Tower Hamlets has a zero-tolerance approach to, and works to eradicate, all forms of discrimination on the basis of race, sex, disability, age, religion or belief, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, marital status, status as a civil partner, gender, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy and maternity and looks to employ a diverse workforce representative of those groups. We recognise that people can also be disadvantaged by their social and economic circumstances, so we will work to eliminate discrimination and disadvantage caused by social class.
We welcome applicants interested in flexible working arrangements and also applicants who live in the borough.