Local Authority

We are a leading adviser to Local Authorities, through frameworks and individual arrangements, providing a full range of legal services. We advise a wide range of departments, with a particular focus on strategic and complex matters.

The varied nature of our work gives us an especially strong understanding of the challenges faced by Local Authorities as they seek to evolve the services offered to the community, derive greater value from their assets and extend their digitalisation programmes. We thrive in this demanding environment, with a strong track record of delivering innovative, customised solutions that respect the differing needs of different towns, cities and combined authorities.

With teams based across 9 UK offices, we provide strong local and regional knowledge, ease of access for our clients and the flexibility to ensure that the right advice is delivered by the right team at the right price.

We provide:

• Real Estate: we work throughout the country on investment acquisitions for councils and significant town centre regeneration projects, with our advice covering asset management, housing arm projects, and infrastructure schemes including all planning, environmental, tax and construction aspects
• Claims: we provide comprehensive claims advice on areas including: public liability, employers liability, catastrophic injury and defamation
• Public Law: we advise Local Government on formulating and implementing policy and apply this knowledge to support the advice we give to local authorities on areas including: constitutional and governance issues, commercial and income-generating relationships and judicial challenge
• Employment: we advise on recruitment and retention policies and procedures and all employment issues including discrimination, equal pay, unfair dismissal and whistleblowing
• Commercial: our procurement specialists provide advice on strategic decisions, technology outsourcing contracts, drafting of service contacts - with facilities and catering for example
• Corporate: our work frequently involves complex loan and financing arrangements
• Health and social care: the areas covered by our Health team include defence of claims relating to abuse, DPA, health and social care commissioning, deprivation of liberty