Manchester City Council aims to be in the top-flight of world-class cities, with a dynamic economy and highly skilled people; to be well-connected, limiting climate change, and helping all of us feel safe and live well in our attractive and welcoming city.
To keep on track, we’ve reset our priorities up to 2025, refocusing on the challenges – putting equality, inclusion and sustainability centre stage – with renewed focus on young people, our economy, health, housing, our environment and infrastructure.
Our Legal Services Teams play an integral part in helping to deliver these priorities, and to support this we are committed to attracting, developing and retaining a world-class workforce.
We are a service that advises on complex, ground-breaking initiatives across Manchester, Salford and Greater Manchester, which make meaningful, lasting differences to the lives of our residents and visitors.
We are a progressive service that offers opportunities to everyone in our service to develop and diversify their legal skills, including:
Our successful Grow Your Own Policy, through active mentoring and development of staff, has enabled staff across the service to become qualified lawyers;
Our Broadening Work Experience initiative which gives staff the opportunities to develop their skills and knowledge through work experience placements with other teams across the service with different legal specialisms; and
Our Workforce Development Group, with a budget dedicated to the development of our staff which has provided financial support for a broad range of training courses including ILEX qualifications, the Legal Practice Course and civil higher rights of audience tuition fees.
Working as part of “virtual” multi-disciplinary teams to deliver complex, high-profile projects, such as the integration of health and social care across Manchester and Salford.
Due to internal promotions, team expansion, and staff securing training contracts with the council we have a number of vacancies, which will help contribute to the council’s ambitions.
The vacancies are across a range of different levels of experience, from people starting their journey towards becoming a qualified lawyer, to lawyers with significant post qualification experience who want to use that experience to make a difference.
The vacancies are across the Housing and Regulatory Group, and are primarily housing related including defending housing disrepair claims, advising on homelessness issues, securing injunctions and closure orders to address anti-social behaviour, and advising on selective licensing schemes to help drive up the quality of private rented sector accommodation across both cities.
In addition to these vacancies we also have a vacancy for a post which undertakes regulatory work, including preparing prosecution files across a diverse range of matters including trading standards, environmental, planning and health and safety.
We do not have any vacancies in this area currently.
Why work with us?
We offer our lawyers flexible start and finish times with an effective remote working-practice model. There’s opportunity for development and variety thanks to the way our teams practise in our Lexcel-accredited and supported legal service.
Legal work for public services in Manchester, Salford and Rochdale Councils and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority puts you among the few practitioners in England’s first, and biggest, devolved region, where major decisions are now taken in-house rather than in Whitehall and by NHS administrations.
If practising in a supportive public service legal team is the right cultural fit for you, please get in touch for an informal discussion. Relocation expenses will be considered.
What you'll get:
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Competitive Salary |  |
24 hour access to the Employee Assistance Programme | |||
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26 days (+5 after 5 years) annual leave |  |
A mix of working from home and on site | |||
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3 days volunteering leave |  |
Development to progress your career | |||
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Local Government Pension Scheme |
We also offer a wide range of health and wellbeing strategies that include:
- Gym membership offers
- Cycling schemes
- Employee groups – from football, gym, yoga classes and ‘MCR social’, to one of the Choirs Gleegal or the Our Manchester Choir (or join both!)
- Financial wellbeing, including discounted travel
- Mental health support
- ‘Simplyhealth’ – cover that looks after you and your family’s health.
Here’s what some of your soon to be colleagues say about working for Manchester ...
Frances McBride - Group Manager in the Children and Families (Legal) Group in Legal Services.
I have worked at MCC since graduating from law school in 2007. I started as a Business Support Officer in the Community Legal Team, then became a Legal Officer in the Housing and Neighbour Nuisance Team before qualifying as a Solicitor, then leading the Housing Team as a Principal Solicitor before starting my current role as Group Manager in Children and Families (Legal).
My experiences with the Council have been largely positive. The Council has provided me with many opportunities to progress within Legal Services. I have been encouraged to develop my expertise as a lawyer, and gain experience in several diverse areas of law. As a large local authority legal service, the breadth and quality of legal work undertaken at MCC is unparalleled. As a mother of three young children, I have received the support and flexibility from management needed to juggle full-time work and parenting.
My time in Housing gave me exposure to all types of civil litigation ranging from public law and judicial review to possession claims, disrepair claims, injunctions and closure orders. I would run my own cases starting from issuing proceedings all the way to conducting advocacy at trial.
In my current role as Group Manager, I now play a key role in setting strategic development of the Group as well an agent for change and growth within Legal Services and the wider Council. I work collaboratively with both internal services and external stakeholders in a manner which is focused on organisational objectives and embraces the principle of joint working and commitment to public service.
In recent years I have noticed that efforts have been made to improve on the lack of diversity in the Council, particularly at senior levels, although it is clear there is still much more work to do. I was given the opportunity to complete the LeadHership Programme, a development programme for women of colour in MCC, which kickstarted my desire to take the next step into senior leadership. As a proud woman of colour, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion is at the core of my ethos; it is the thread running through everything I am and the reason I work in the public sector. I am very proud to work for Manchester City Council.
James Flanagan - Senior Legal Officer / Trainee Solicitor
I am a senior legal officer within the Housing and Neighbourhoods team.
I graduated law school in 2018 having after finishing my LLM & LPC. I initially worked for a small legal aid practice in Leeds working in housing disrepair work with ASB, homelessness etc.
I joined the council in 2020 as a Legal Officer as I wanted to broaden my experience in the area of Landlord and Tennant law by acting on the opposing side of proceedings to my previous role having mainly been involved in Defence work.
The team deal with a wide array of matters including Housing Disrepair Claims, Anti-Social Behaviour, Premises Closure Orders and Homelessness Allocation and Appeals.
The majority of my workload is Housing disrepair based which is seeing a large increase in volume nationally at the moment as previous PI focused firms are seeking to increase their cash flow following the PI costs reforms by jumping into new areas of law which have not yet seen fixed costs implemented.
I have been impressed by the great resilience the team has shown despite the challenges and the new and innovate ways which we approach these types of claims. Whereas other housing providers may take the view of settling all disrepair claims, our team make conscious efforts to defend all spurious claims.
I have always found the team to be incredibly supportive and willing to help on any matter or issue I have. We benefit from being able to freely discuss our views on points of law and/or practise and we are have been able to develop a joint approach on a number of matters.
It has been encouraging that we have had some fantastic results over the last 12 months including having successfully defended every disrepair case that has reached trial stage and the closure of various prolific and criminally associated premises throughout Manchester.
Since joining the team, I have been able to benefit from the number of development opportunities and I have been able progress relatively quickly. In May 2022, I was promoted to Senior Legal Officer and take on further responsibilities. Following this, in July 2022, I was successful in securing a training contract within Legal Services which I commence in the January 2023. I am looking forward to working in the various teams and learning new areas of law such as prosecutions and regulation, Children and Families and democratic services.
Are you ready to apply?
- Apply your knowledge of the law relating to housing; primarily defending housing disrepair claims, advising on homelessness issues, securing injunctions and closure orders to address anti-social behaviour, and advising on selective licensing schemes to help drive up the quality of private rented sector accommodation across Manchester and Salford
- Join the UKs largest shared legal service. Provide high-quality, value-for-money legal services to Manchester, Salford and Rochdale Councils.
- Provide legal support for Council objectives. Input into strategic planning and policy.
- We will be hosting a virtual open evening 18:00 - 19:00 on 5th December to give you the chance to find out more about the service, opportunities available and to ask any questions. If you would like to attend, please email matthew.lockett@manchester.gov.uk with the subject header open evening to receive an invite. Alternatively, you can contact Matthew Lockett, Group Leader - Housing and Regulatory (Legal) Services on 0161 234 3756.
Here are the links to a couple of the vacancies we currently have -
Why work for Manchester?
Manchester was named 2018 the best UK city to live in by The Economist’s Global Liveability Index last year, based on factors including political and social stability, crime rates, education, and access to healthcare. Manchester’s rating puts it 13 places ahead of London. It is notable for its architecture, culture, musical exports, media links, scientific and engineering output, social impact, sports clubs and transport connections. Don’t believe what you hear about the city’s weather either! The city’s average annual rainfall is 806.6 millimetres (31.76 in) compared to the UK average of 1,125 millimetres (44.29 in) and its mean rain days are 140.4 a year, compared to the 154.4 UK average.
Excellent transport connectivity and top cultural attractions combine to make this a great city to live in. Improvements in healthcare and education, as well as attractive qualities such as
our thriving night-time economy and sports offering, continue to attract people from around the world to live, work and study here. We’d love you to be part of it.
We are a service that embraces equality, diversity and inclusion and values every individual for who they are.
We have facilitated and encouraged staff to participate in the council’s LeadHERship program for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic women. The aim of this programme is to bring women together to take an honest look at who they are, what they want, and how they can work to achieve their ambitions. Content includes high quality, ‘best practice’ leadership literature, experiential activities, and reflective tasks. Throughout the program, participants are also free to connect with each other and offer ‘peer support. Underpinning the six modules are three key principles, self-introspection, self-awareness, and self-leadership. As a service we have some brilliant success stories from staff participating in these programmes. Our commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion doesn't stop there. All of our staff participate in Let’s Talk About Race training to help us better understand the nature of systemic racism and racial micro-aggressions, to feel more confident to have constructive and respectful conversations about race at work, and to create a workplace where everyone is comfortable and where everyone feels included.
If you want to work for a service that is passionate about mental health and wellbeing, we could be the team for you. We recently held a Wellbeing Week, with internal and external presenters and interactive sessions to highlight the importance of personal wellbeing.
We encourage our staff to make use of the 3 volunteering days which are available to everyone via the council’s Volunteering Scheme. Staff have taken the opportunity to help out at Manchester Dog’s Home, volunteered to lend a hand at the Booth Centre, which is a community centre run with people who are affected by homelessness and assisted at Books to Go, a library outreach service to housebound residents.
We were also one of the first services across the council to establish accredited mental health first aiders within our service to support colleagues in need.
