Closing date: 16 June 2024

• Salary: £51,100 – 58,000 gross per annum at 1.0 FTE, or pro rata equivalent if part-time.

• Working pattern: 1.0 FTE (37.5 hrs per week), or 0.9 or 0.8 FTE. Flexible working requests will be considered.

• Contract: permanent with a 6 month probationary period

• Team: UK Legal Team

• Location: This role can be hybrid, or office based with the ability to attend ad hoc events and away days in person.

• Reporting to: CEO

• Management responsibilities: Currently 6 Immigration Lawyers/Immigration Casework Supervisors

Safe Passage International (SPI) is recruiting a Head of UK Legal Team to lead our ground-breaking legal work in the UK. The UK Legal team works to ensure that safe routes exist for all people seeking asylum. The team specialises in providing free legal advice and representation to unaccompanied children and families seeking asylum in the UK.

The Head of UK Legal Team will be a UK-based qualified solicitor or barrister or OISC Level 3 accredited caseworker or IAAS Supervising Senior caseworker with experience of working within the UK in a legal capacity, specifically in the area of asylum, immigration and refugee family reunion.

Reporting directly to the CEO, you will lead a high performing team of immigration lawyers, casework supervisors, and caseworkers. You will drive the development and delivery of our legal strategy in the UK; supervise all UK legal casework; lead our litigation strategy; develop good practices of line management and regulatory compliance within the team; and lead legal policy work by collaborating closely with colleagues within the UK, France and Greece to create a cohesive, powerful, cross-border legal response and framework.

You will also work closely with the Heads of SPI Greece and France, our International Safeguarding and Protection Manager, Experts by Experience Consultants, and Safe Passage Young Leaders to shape our legal function.

This is a vital role within the senior leadership team of a young and dynamic organisation. We are looking for an experienced leader with a strong strategic vision, an ambitious outlook for our legal work, and a creative and initiative-taking approach to leading and managing our UK legal team.  Experience in a similar role would be welcome, but this could also be your first paid position in the charity sector, or you could be returning to work after time out.

We value equity and diversity in our organisation and are striving to build a workforce reflective of the communities we work with. We encourage applications from people of all ethnicities, working ages, genders, sex, sexual orientations, faiths (or non), marital status (or non) and pregnancy status. We also have full flexible working policies to support people with disabilities and caring responsibilities. People with refugee or asylum-seeking backgrounds are experts by experience and are particularly encouraged to apply.

As a refugee charity, we offer a guaranteed interview for people with lived experience of seeking asylum who meet most of the essential criteria outlined in the Person Specification. If you have first-hand experience of applying for asylum in any country, please let us know in your application.

We respect that people’s identity is not defined by their past experiences and do not expect candidates to describe their lived experience during the interview process unless they wish to.

If you are excited by this role and working at Safe Passage but do not have all the experience you think is needed, we would encourage you to apply anyway and contact us for an informal chat beforehand to discuss why you would like to apply for the role and what skills or experiences you think are relevant.

If you would like to arrange this, please contact hr@safepassage.org.uk

How do I apply?

Please read the full Job Description & Person Specification and our ‘How to Apply Guide’ which can be found on our website: https://www.safepassage.org.uk/head-of-uk-legal-team-may-24

Closing date: Sunday 16th June 2024 at 11.59 pm.