Abingdon-on-Thames, United Kingdom Legal Counsel (Property & Planning)
Overview of Responsibilities
As Legal Counsel, you will play a key role in supporting the full lifecycle of UKFE’s property, land and infrastructure activities. From strategic land assembly and acquisitions through to development agreements, planning support and estate management matters, you’ll provide practical legal solutions that help drive programme success.
You will act as a trusted adviser to internal stakeholders, supporting major projects, negotiating complex agreements and helping establish legal frameworks, governance processes and best practice as UKFE continues to grow.
Key Responsibilities
Strategic Legal Advice
- Provide pragmatic and commercially focused legal advice on property, land, planning and infrastructure matters.
- Partner with colleagues across Property, Programme Delivery, Commercial, Engineering and Corporate Services.
- Identify legal risks and opportunities, offering practical and proportionate solutions.
- Support decision-making on significant property, development and infrastructure projects.
- Manage external legal advisers where specialist expertise is required.
Land Acquisition & Development
- Advise on land acquisitions, disposals, leases, licences and related property transactions.
- Support strategic land assembly and development projects from inception through delivery.
- Draft, review and negotiate a broad range of property and development agreements.
- Advise on title matters, land rights, access arrangements and development constraints.
- Work collaboratively with project teams to facilitate successful infrastructure delivery.
Planning, Estates & Infrastructure
- Support property and land aspects of planning and consenting processes.
- Draft and negotiate leases, easements, wayleaves and access agreements.
- Advise on landlord and tenant matters, rights over land and utility-related issues.
- Deliver legally robust solutions that enable programme objectives and long-term estate requirements.
Legal Risk & Governance
- Identify and manage legal risks associated with property, planning and infrastructure matters.
- Support governance and decision-making processes for significant projects and transactions.
- Ensure compliance with relevant legislation, internal policies and delegated authorities.
- Assist with disputes, claims and other property-related legal matters.
- Contribute to the development of legal templates, guidance and governance frameworks.
Stakeholder Engagement & Continuous Improvement
- Build strong relationships across UKFE and with external stakeholders, including government bodies, landowners and delivery partners.
- Communicate legal advice clearly and effectively to both legal and non-legal audiences.
- Support knowledge sharing, training and continuous improvement initiatives.
- Help shape efficient legal processes and ways of working across the organisation.
About You
We’re looking for a qualified legal professional with significant experience advising on property, land, infrastructure or development matters. You’ll be a collaborative and commercially minded lawyer who enjoys working in a complex, fast-paced environment and partnering with operational teams to deliver practical outcomes.
You will bring:
- Qualification as a Solicitor, Barrister or equivalent legal professional.
- Strong experience in property, land, planning, infrastructure or development law.
- Experience drafting and negotiating complex property and development agreements.
- The ability to balance legal risk with commercial and programme delivery objectives.
- Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills.
- A proactive and solution-focused approach to legal problem solving.
Why Join UKFE?
This is an opportunity to contribute to a nationally significant programme that is helping to advance fusion energy and support the UK’s transition to a cleaner, more sustainable future.
In return, you’ll work alongside talented and passionate colleagues on pioneering projects, gain exposure to complex and novel legal challenges, and help shape the legal frameworks supporting one of the most exciting clean energy programmes in the world.
Qualifications
Essential:
- Qualified solicitor in England and Wales, or equivalent legal qualification, with a current practising certificate or professional registration where required.
- Significant experience advising on commercial property and real estate matters, gained in-house, in private practice or in a comparable legal environment.
- Strong drafting, review and negotiation skills across a broad range of property agreements, including acquisitions, disposals, leases, licences, easements, wayleaves and other land-related documentation.
- Ability to provide clear, concise and pragmatic legal advice to non-legal stakeholders.
- Sound judgement, including the ability to balance legal risk with commercial and programme delivery objectives.
- Strong communication, stakeholder engagement and relationship-building skills.
- Ability to work independently, manage competing priorities and know when to escalate.
- Experience identifying legal risks and developing practical, proportionate solutions.
- Curiosity and learning agility, including the ability to develop expertise quickly in unfamiliar legal, commercial or technical areas.
Beneficial:
- Experience advising on major infrastructure, renewable energy, clean energy, regeneration or development projects.
- Experience supporting nationally significant infrastructure projects (NSIPs) or other major capital programmes.
- Experience advising on strategic land assembly, development agreements or complex land acquisition projects.
- Familiarity with planning law and the interaction between planning, property and infrastructure delivery.
- Experience supporting Development Consent Order (DCO) projects, compulsory acquisition or other statutory consenting processes.
- Experience advising on utility agreements, easements, wayleaves and other third-party land rights.
- Experience working within an in-house legal team or closely with programme delivery teams.
- Experience working within government, arm's-length bodies or other public sector organisations.
- Experience managing external legal advisers and multidisciplinary project teams.
- Interest in fusion energy, clean energy or other large-scale innovation and infrastructure programmes.
Additional Information
We welcome applications from under-represented groups, particularly women in STEM and individuals from British black and ethnic minority backgrounds, and individuals with disabilities. Our Executive team, supported by our 'Equality, Diversity and Inclusion' (EDI) Partner and Inclusion Ambassadors, actively promotes EDI and takes steps to increase diversity within our organisation. We reinforce best practices in recruitment and selection and evaluate approaches to remove barriers to success.
UKFE is committed to being accessible. Please email [email protected] if you have any questions or require help or adjustments to compete on a fair basis, for example, changes to the way we interview or share information.
This role requires employees to complete an online Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS), including the Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS) checks for criminal convictions. Whilst not required at this time, there is a possibility of an SC Clearance being required in the future. If a candidate already holds an SC clearance, that clearance can be transferred to UKFE.
As we work towards our mission and goals, guided by our principles, STEP has six behaviours that are intended to capture the spirit of how we work:
- We champion safety
- We all matter
- We act as one
- We embrace change
- We are pioneering
- We deliver
For applicants applying from outside the United Kingdom or those who have spent time outside the UK in the last five years, please visit the following link for information on criminal records checks: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/criminal-records-checks-for-overseas-applicants If your country of residence or previous residence is not listed on the website or if the UK Government does not have information on obtaining a criminal records check from that state, we regret to inform you that we cannot process your application.
