Working for us: Legal & Procurement
Litigation
The Litigation Team work incredibly hard on a range of legal cases regulatory prosecutions and civil litigations, and provide professional advice to a number of internal and external stakeholders.
Regulatory prosecutions and associated legal notices can range from environmental health cases such as fly-tipping, public protection including trading standards, planning enforcement, school attendance, and community safety.
Civil litigations can include trespasser removal, miscellaneous uninsured claims, and debt recovery.
The team also advise regulatory committees such as taxi regulation, licensed premises regulation, school appeals, and school transport appeals.
Commercial Property Services
Although there is a strong emphasis on transactional commercial property matters (property development and property management), this small team of four officers deals with a far wider range of matters to support this unitary authority. We also advise on:
- Education property matters – statutory transfers and Academy transfers;
- Highway advice: traffic regulation matters, magistrate stopping up Orders, footpath and bridleway advice/orders as well as supporting on formal highway (adoption) agreements;
- Limited Planning advice : s106 agreements, attending Planning and Highways Committee and some technical advice. Planning litigation is supported more heavily by the Litigation team; and
- Procedural advice to ensure legislative and constitutional compliance by the Council in relation to property matters.
Our team works mostly with professional Council officers such as Surveyors and Planners, but it remains common for instructions or projects to be led by officers without a strong property or legal background.
Procurement Team
The procurement team seek value for money on all goods, works and services bought by the council. We continuously improve the procurement process to obtain the best value from the contracts we enter into and to minimise the administration costs of buying. We offer guidance, advice and support on all aspects of procurement to all council departments. The unit ensures that all procurements comply with the council’s rules and national and European Law. We control and monitor all major contracts for the procurement of goods, works and services. We purchase a wide range of goods and services to support our operations and to deliver high-quality services to residents, businesses and visitors. To deliver these services we buy goods and services ranging from pencils to buildings. We spend around £115 million every year and we aim to ensure that they deliver value for the money which we do through using a mix of the best suppliers to promote diverse and competitive local economy.
Adult Social Care and Education legal team
The Adult Social Care team provides legal advice and assistance to the Adults and Health directorate on all aspects of adult social care law including safeguarding, community care, funding responsibilities etc and provides legal advice and representation in the Court of Protection, Family Court, Civil Court and Coroners Court.
The Education team provides legal advice and assistance to the Education department on all aspects of Education law including school admissions and appeals, school transport, local authority duties etc. and provides legal advice and representation on the Local Authority’s statutory duties in respect of Education, Health and Care Plans including appeals to the First Tier Tribunal Special Educational Needs and Disability.