• Reference: XL41
• Division: Governance, People and Performance
• Salary: £45,113.00 - £56,407.00 per annum pro rata
• Contract type: Permanent
• Posted on: 19 March 2025
• Interview date: 14 April 2025 - 18 April 2025
• Extra payment(s): Not applicable
• Positions: 1
• Category: Support services
• Grade: J - L
• Working hours: Varied
• Closing date: 09 April 2025
• Location: Town Hall, Crawley
• Location type: Hybrid

This is an exciting opportunity to join Crawley Borough Council’s Legal Team and to make a real difference to the town, its people and its local businesses. 75 years on from its establishment as a new town, Crawley is a regional powerhouse with more than 114,000 residents, a £6bn economy and Gatwick Airport, the world’s busiest single runway airport.
We have a good track record of providing high-quality legal advice and transactional services to the council. We maintain positive and collaborative relations with councillors, internal clients and other stakeholders. To build on that, we are always looking at how we can deliver our service more efficiently and sharpen our outcomes-based focus. With an embedded case management system in place and fully electronic legal research tools, we are mostly paperless and working our way towards digital signing and sealing.
The council’s functions and activities are wide-ranging and as such it enters into low to high-value contracts for goods and/or services, call-off, IT, and building works plus framework agreements, funding agreements, data protection agreements and consultancy agreements. As the council moves through central government’s devolution and local government re-organisation programmes, you will have exposure to and be working on a complex and challenging range of contracts
You will lead on contract law at Crawley, be the client’s go-to person and supervise others in the Legal Team. You will be responsible for knowledge development and horizon scanning in this technical area.
You will be able to demonstrate experience of providing professional, high quality and timely advice, guidance and representation over a range of different contractual aspects and transactions. You must be a qualified and practising barrister, solicitor or legal executive (CFILEX) with significant experience. You will be able to provide evidence of this as well as of your continuous professional development.
This role will offer you opportunities for growth and professional development - not only through the breadth of local authority contractual work but also across a range of continuous improvement, legal technology and governance projects.
The Legal Team fosters a friendly, collegiate and supportive physical and remote working environment. With a mix of homeworking and office-based working, we offer flexibility to the team and to our new recruits.
We welcome applications from full-time or part-time candidates and aim to support those with family commitments or caring responsibilities. We also welcome candidates from public or private sector legal backgrounds.