Director of Planning

DMH Stallard is an award winning South East law firm with offices in London, Brighton, Gatwick, Guilford and Horsham. DMH Stallard has grown rapidly since it was established in 1970, and continues to maintain its focus on building long term relationships with clients to help deliver their goals and objectives.Our firm provides a comprehensive range of commercial, dispute resolution and litigation, employment, cyber security and cyber-crime, corporate, intellectual property, real estate and technology, media and telecoms advice to both businesses and individuals. Our clients, our people and our professional networks are the keys to our success.

Our Planning Team is one of the largest teams of chartered planning consultants within a law firm anywhere in England, providing planning consultancy and advising on a range of issues concerning planning law, environmental law, compulsory purchase, infrastructure and highways.

We are looking for a Director of Planning to join our Planning team with the role being based in our Gatwick office. The team does a wide range of contentious and non contentious work across the general disciplines of planning and environmental law, including infrastructure work (i.e. highways agreements, drainage/sewerage agreements) and statutory/common law nuisance. We also have experience of other regulatory regimes such as health and safety.

The role is to operate as an effective member of the Planning Group. To support the Head of Planning Consultancy team, as well as supporting the partners and other members of the Legal Planning team as required. You will be responsible for your own caseload of work and assist senior members of the team on their caseload and support the Partners in particular in delivering high levels of service.  

WHO AND WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR

The key criteria for the ideal candidate will include: 

·Previous experience of working within a Planning Team.

·Solid experience of Planning within the UK is essential, including a good understanding of the relevant legislation and case law.

·Experience of managing and developing client relationships.

·Able to contribute to business development activities.

·A commercial and pragmatic approach to advice and negotiations is highly important.

·Able to deal and get on with a wide range of clients with differing objectives including being able to understand the commercial objectives of the client.

·Ability to delegate tasks as appropriate and coach other individuals.

·Experience in the handling of major planning applications.

·The ability to maintain good working relationships with local planning authorities, both to secure prompt and sympathetic handling of applications and, on occasion, instructions from such authorities to act on their behalf.

·To help ensure that all members of the Planning Consultancy team keep up-to-date with developments in planning law and policy and other matters relevant to their continuing education and comply with the training requirements of the RTPI.

·Ability to effectively manage their time to achieve client and internal deadlines.

·Understanding the importance of client care with an ability to deal with a wide range of clients with differing objectives including being able to understand the commercial objectives of the client.

·Able to work within a team and provide support to Partners and other Directors as appropriate.

·Competent IT skills including Outlook, Word  and  time recording systems.

·Understanding of the strategy and vision of the firm.

·Communicate effectively with clients, in writing, over the telephone and in meetings.

·Convey technical legal information in an effective and accessible way.

This is a great opportunity for someone enthusiastic and reliable to work within a forward thinking, award winning law firm with a highly regarding Planning team.