Senior Information Governance Lawyer

Job Category: Legal (Specialist)
Location: London Borough of Hillingdon, London Borough of Hillingdon
Hours Per Week: 36.00
Start Date: Immediate Start
Start Time: 09:00
End Time: 17:00
Salary: £33.93

The role is for an information governance lawyer within the council’s Information Governance Team. The successful candidate will be reporting to the Deputy Principal Lawyer for the Freedom of Information Data Governance legal team by providing proactive, specialist, in-depth, legal advice to the client departments as well as implementing initiatives and processes in order to set high quality standards in managing legal risk.

The successful candidates day to day responsibilities will include:
• To have conduct of cases in all Courts, Tribunals etc., to appear personally on the Council’s behalf as appropriate in cases in civil courts and before Tribunals and Inquiries.
• To maintain a cross-functional perspective when advising the Council, by understanding the inter-play between different departments where there maybe competing interests and risks.
• To review and advise on all legal aspects of cabinet reports and Council publications.
• To advise on, respond to and review Subject Access Requests and Freedom of Information Requests
• To be a point of contact with the Information Commissioner and to assist the achievement of statutory targets on FOI / SAR etc.
• To take responsibility for advising senior officers and other officers and Members of the Council on relevant matters.
• To deal with those legal matters delegated by the Head of Legal Services.
• Provide legal advice and support to other groups in the Council as directed by the Head of Legal Services.
• To personally provide accurate and timely legal advice to clients in a cost effective and efficient manner.
• To demonstrate understanding of the Council’s Customer Care Standards and ensure that these standards are met in order to deliver the Council vision of ‘putting our residents first’.
• To brief the Head of Legal Services on all significant matters as necessary.

The successful candidate will be a qualified solicitor, barrister or legal executive with experience in information governance.

Experience of working within a local authority or at least reviewing and understanding local authority files particularly sensitive files such as social work files is preferable.

The following knowledge and skills are essential:
• Knowledge of local government law, and recent legislative developments.
• Knowledge of information governance law and an ability to acquire a specialist knowledge of at least one of these areas.
• Ability to work under pressure and meet deadlines
• Ability to proactively provide legal advice and support to customers including Councillors and senior officers
• Ability to provide legal advice related to the Council’s policy objectives
• Problem solving skills

The local authority will consider requests for the role to be fully remote.