Care Quality Commission
Senior Lawyer
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Grade A - £55,172 (National) or £61,028 (London – for London office based or homebased workers within the boundary of the M25) – This role also offers a £600 annual homeworking allowance and a £2,500 Recruitment and Retention allowance.
Contracted Hours: Full time 37 hours per week
Contract Type: 12 Month Fixed Term or Secondment Opportunity - to provide cover for a substantive post holder who is currently undertaking a secondment to another role.
Internal applicants must obtain written confirmation from their line manager, granting permission to be released from their current role, before applying for this opportunity.
Location: Home or office based (flexible location) or hybrid working (working 2 days a week from home). CQC’s offices are in London, Newcastle, Leeds, Nottingham, and Bristol
Closing date: Sunday 6 September 2026 at 11.59pm
Make a difference
Every role at CQC contributes to our mission. If you’re looking for a new role in the Legal Services Directorate that gives a true sense of meaning and purpose, then you’ve found it! As a Senior Lawyer, you’ll help ensure that CQC’s decisions are legally sound and support our mission to improve health and social care for everyone.
Picture this
Imagine leading a team of legal professionals who are passionate about making a difference, where your advice helps shape national policy and protect people’s rights.
In the last year as a Senior Lawyer, you might have:
- Led the legal response to a complex public law case, ensuring actions were fair, lawful, and in the public interest.
- Developed a new legal framework to support enforcement activity, helping frontline teams act swiftly and confidently.
- Supported the development of new or emerging policies or legislation.
The role
You’ll play an important part in delivering our mission. In this role, you’ll:
- Lead and develop a legal team: Provide coaching, supervision, and support to ensure high-quality legal advice across the organisation.
- Advise on legal matters: Offer clear, solutions-focused legal guidance on a wide range of issues, including policy development and public law.
- Shape legal strategy: Work with senior leaders to align legal priorities with CQC’s goals and ensure legal risks are identified and managed early.
Show us
We will be looking for specific skills, knowledge and experience in your application form:
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- Demonstrated legal expertise: You’re a qualified solicitor, barrister, or chartered legal executive with at least 5 years’ post-qualification experience, including advising on complex legal matters.
- Leadership and team development: You’ve successfully led and supported legal professionals, helping them grow and deliver high-quality work.
- Strategic legal thinking: You’ve used your legal knowledge to shape policy or operational decisions, balancing risk and benefit in a fast-paced environment.
Join us and help CQC shape the future of health and care.
Compliance
Note for internal candidates:
This is a secondment/fixed term opportunity. Please read the recruitment and selection policy section on secondments. You must discuss your application with your line manager before applying.
To progress your application, you’ll need to provide evidence of your right to work in the UK. Without valid right to work you won’t be eligible for the role. We are unable to offer sponsorship for this role. Some roles may also be subject to a satisfactory DBS check.
Next steps
If you apply, you’ll need to create a profile and complete an online application form. Your application will be completely anonymous. Please see our information for applicants for more details on the process. We contact every applicant to let them know the outcome of their application, so you will hear from us whether or not you are shortlisted.
You can read the full details of the role in the Job Description
If you’d like an informal chat about the role contact – Jessica Franklin, Deputy Director of Advisory Legal Services; Jessica.Franklin@cqc.org.uk. For general enquiries, please email recruitment@cqc.org.uk.
The Benefits
We offer a wide range of benefits, including:
- Annual leave starting at 27 days per year, rising to 32.5 days with service, plus bank holidays (usually 8 days per year).
- Training and development opportunities.
- Wellbeing initiatives, such as gym discounts and meditation.
- NHS pension scheme, with around 14% employer contribution.
- Discount schemes (including eligibility for a Blue Light card, at a cost of £4.99 and valid for 2 years), reward vouchers, car leasing and more!
Please see our benefits page for the full list.
Equity for all
We know job descriptions can feel intimidating. Research shows they can cause some people to doubt whether they’re a good fit. This happens more often to people from underrepresented groups (e.g. ethnic minority backgrounds). If this role interests you, we encourage you to apply. Your unique perspective, skills, and experience could be exactly what we need.
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We want every candidate to feel supported and able to do their best. If you need adjustments to our process, we’ll work with you to remove any barriers. Visit our accessibility page for more on this. If you’d like to chat, please contact recruitment@cqc.org.uk. Please note, if you have previously informed us of adjustments you need for interview or within your role these are not carried over and must be discussed for each individual application you make.
We promote a workplace where fairness, respect and inclusion are a priority. Diverse teams make our work better, help us deliver our mission and make our culture stronger. See our ED&I page for more about this.
We welcome applications from everyone, and colleagues can find support and community among our many employee networks. This includes people of any:
- Age
- Sex
- Gender identity or expression
- Sexual orientation
- Religion or belief
- Ethnicity
- Disability
Values and vision
We are guided by our core values, which shape our work and our culture.
- Excellence – being a high-performing organisation.
- Caring – treating everyone with dignity and respect.
- Integrity – doing the right thing.
- Teamwork – learning from each other to be the best we can.
We are a disability confident employer and a carer confident employer.
A Note on AI
AI tools can be great for research and refining ideas, but we want to learn about you. If you use AI or Chatbots to help you with your application, keep these points in mind:
- AI can support research, structuring and refining your writing, but your application must reflect your real skills and experience.
- Spell-checking and condensing word counts are great ways to use AI effectively.
- Do not copy and paste AI generated answers. These will not help you stand out; remember we want to hear about your skills and experience.
- Providing false and insincere examples goes against our core values of honesty and integrity and may lead to your application being withdrawn or termination of your employment.
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