Solicitor - Plymouth

Location: Plymouth

Salary: £42,697 per annum

Full time: 37.5 per week

Contract: Permanent

Closing date: Thursday 6th March 2025 at 11.30 pm 

Are you a Solicitor with experience of housing and homelessness law and Legal Aid? If so then consider a move to Shelter you could soon be making a real difference to people affected by the housing emergency.

About the role

Using your legal expertise, you will play a key role in tackling housing in justice and unfair housing practices. You will be working under our Legal Aid contract, delivering legal advice and representing tenants at court where needed. Delivering systemic change through legal challenge to prevent homeless will also be a considerable part of the role. You will also work with the team in the Hub to help make sure people in the community are aware of their housing rights and how to enforce them, as well as providing support to Trainee Solicitors and Legal Advisers, ensuring good practice and compliance.

About You

Qualified as a Solicitor with at least three years post qualifying experience, you will have a strong knowledge of housing law and substantial experience of managing a wide range of housing cases. You have strong skills in court advocacy, litigation, report writing, file reviews and are able to meet financial targets. You will be able to meet the 2018 SQM supervisor standard in housing and be able to demonstrate experience of working under a legal aid contract.

Benefits

We offer a wide range of benefits, including 30 days of annual leave, enhanced family friendly policies, pension and interest free travel loans. Our employees also have access to a tenancy deposit loan, payroll giving, cycle to work scheme and an employee assistance programme.

About Shelter

Home is a human right. It’s our foundation and where we thrive. Yet everyday millions of people are being devastated by the housing emergency.

We exist to defend the right to a safe home. Because home is everything.

We need ambitious, passionate people to join us. This is your chance to play a part in the fundamental change we are striving to achieve.

Our enemy is the social injustice at the core of the escalating housing emergency. To win this fight, we must be representative of the people we are here to help and those who support our movement. In all our people decisions, we take pride in being inclusive, equitable and transparent. We are committed to combating racism both within and outside Shelter. We welcome you on our journey to becoming truly anti-racist.

About The Team

Our Legal Service provides specialist legal knowledge across Shelter through four teams covering Community Legal advice, Strategic Litigation, the National Legal Team and Legal Support Team. You will be part of our Community Legal Team, who are based across our 11 hub locations and work alongside hub colleagues every day to fight housing injustice and deliver systemic change relating to housing practice in our local communities.

The Advice team at our Plymouth Hub delivers legal aid funded and non-legal aid funded work throughout Devon and Cornwall. Also based at the Hub are members of our Lived Experience team, who deliver a range of activities with the aim of ensuring the views and experiences of individuals with lived experience of bad housing or homelessness informs all of Shelter’s work and a Community Organiser who works with the local community to fight the housing emergency.

People are at the heart of the services we offer and in order to keep growing and evolving to suit the communities we work with and bring about real change, we need to understand what really matters for people.

We are happy to talk about flexible working, personal growth, and to promote a workplace where you can be yourself and achieve success based only on your merit.

How to Apply

Please submit your CV with a supporting statement with responses to the 'About You' points 1-7 outlined in the job description of no more than 1000 words. Please provide specific examples following the STAR format and ensure you demonstrate how you address the behaviour below throughout your responses:

• We prioritise diversity and have an inclusive and open mindset

Safeguarding Statement

Safeguarding is everyone's business. Shelter is committed to protecting the health, wellbeing and human rights of those we support, and enabling them to live free from harm, abuse and neglect. All our staff will be expected to observe professional standards of behaviour and conduct their work in line with our Safeguarding Policies.

Recruitment Agencies

Shelter does not accept unsolicited CVs from external recruitment agencies nor accept the fees associated with them.