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Deputy Director, Legal & Governance Legal & Governance

Employer
One Source
Location
London (Greater)
Salary
Competitive
Closing date
24 May 2022

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Job Details

Established in 2014, one source legal services is one of the most successful shared services in the country with over 70 fee earners. Our six teams provided a comprehensive legal service to both Newham and Havering councils, schools and council owned companies.  Lexcel accredited, we have made significant improvements since becoming an integrated team and over 90% of our clients rate our case work as good or excellent. We have strong relationships with the corporate and political leaderships in both boroughs, regularly advising the Leader and Mayor in person. Legal & Governance also includes democratic and electoral services, and all services work closely together. The Legal Service is based in Newham Dockside with lawyers and managers regularly sharing their time in Havering Town Hall to ensure a personal service is provided.

Deputy Director, Legal & Governance Legal & Governance | Competitive salary

In this key role, you will lead six Heads of Service across contract & company law; housing & litigation; enforcement litigation; safeguarding; planning & property; and regeneration. With a budget of over £6m, in this role you will manage and improve our excellent legal services function that delivers across a complex two-borough system.

In addition to leading our legal services, you will be the statutory Monitoring Officer for Havering Council, also leading across democratic and election services. As we strive to refine what excellent service delivery looks like in the future, you will work closely with the Chief Executive to set the vision and strategic direction for the teams you lead, bringing a new and fresh outlook to deliver the appropriate legal advice and guidance to the Council, its committees, and internal officers.

Leadership is key in this role. To succeed, you will develop the expertise of both your direct, and indirect repots, putting in place strong succession management for all roles.

About You

Having excellent, solution focussed legal and governance skills is essential but that is just the starting point. You will be able to lead and take forward one of the largest legal teams in London delivering high quality and value for money across two Councils with their own priorities

In addition to your PQE and local government experience, we are particularly interested in your ability, and ambition to lead, innovate and improve our service.

Please click Apply for more information about the role, or for a confidential discussion about your suitability, please contact Frazer Thouard (07384 810 743) or Kate Merson (020 7426 3376) from our recruitment partners, GatenbySanderson.

Closing date: 5th June 2022

Company

Havering and Newham councils worked in partnership to create a new shared back office support service, called oneSource. The councils brought together 22 separate services, with a total budget of around £58million, and 1,350 staff to create a single shared support service. This will save the two authorities an estimated £40million by 2018/19 with the savings being used to protect frontline services. Ongoing savings of £10.6m a year will be achieved by 2018/19.

The vision for the shared support services between Newham and Havering is to provide: ‘an efficient and fully integrated support services model that promotes resilience and achieves savings’.

Alongside being able to do more with less and enabling the sharing of expertise the shared service will:

  • Improve the customer experience by building an outstanding service, with focussed experts, best practice business services, the latest Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system and a strong customer management focus.
  • Reduce the cost of support services by sharing assets (IT, buildings, resources, management) and reducing process cost through economies of scale.
  • Improve services by freeing the departments to focus on their core objectives, taking the best from each other to capitalise on our strengths and reduce our weaknesses.
  • Increase operational efficiency through improved delivery, better systems and management information.
  • Create new opportunities by using our own talent to redesign our business, creating an excellent service which others will want to use and learn from.
  • Give resilience and flexibility by using standard systems where a pool of resources is able to cover unexpected resource shortages. Working together also means we are at the forefront of the changing world of local government and ready to help others work differently.

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