Senior Lawyer – Inquires Team

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

Internal applicants must obtain written confirmation from their line manager, granting permission to be released from their current role, before applying for this opportunity.

Although this role is offered as a fixed term contract, we are also currently rebuilding our organisation and reviewing our structures and ways of working across several areas of the business, including Legal Services. We would encourage applicants to carefully consider the contract duration as advertised.

Location: Home-based

Closing Date: Thursday 5 November 2026 at 11.59pm

Make a difference
Every role at CQC contributes to our mission. If you’re looking for a new role in Legal Services that gives a true sense of meaning and purpose, then you’ve found it.
As a Senior Lawyer in the Inquires Team, you'll help ensure CQC responds effectively to public inquiries, supporting better outcomes across health and social care.

Picture this
You'll work at the heart of important decisions, providing practical legal advice that helps CQC respond to high-profile inquiries and investigations, ensuring important lessons are identified and acted upon. You'll collaborate with colleagues across the organisation to solve complex challenges, manage legal risks, and shape effective legal solutions.

As a Senior Lawyer, you might:

• Get the chance to work on CQC's response to a major public inquiry or independent investigation, helping identify legal risks and supporting complex casework that informs organisational learning.
• Help shape strategic legal solutions that influence how CQC respond effectively to emerging issues across health and social care sectors.

The role
You'll play an important part in delivering our mission. In this role, you'll:

• Lead and support a legal team: Manage, coach and develop legal professionals, helping them deliver high-quality advice and services across CQC.
• Provide expert legal guidance: Deliver practical, solutions-focused legal advice across CQC, support inquiry proceedings where required, helping colleagues and leaders make informed legally-robust decisions.
• Drive continuous improvement: Monitor legal trends, review team performance, build strong relationships, and use feedback and learning to drive improvement in legal services and support organisational priorities.
  

Show us
We will be looking for specific skills, knowledge and experience in your application form:

• A legal qualification as a Solicitor, Barrister or Fellow of CILEX, with the right to practise in England and Wales, with at least 5 years post qualification experience of advising on public inquiries, inquests or significant public law matters including preparing submissions, drafting witness statements, or acting as a legal representative.
• Experience leading, coaching or developing legal professionals while managing legal work and delivering high-quality outcomes.
• Experience advising on complex legal matters, assessing legal risk, and explaining legal issues clearly to senior stakeholders or colleagues.

Apply today to join a workplace where your impact is felt every day.

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 – Suleman Patel, Deputy Director of Public Inquiries at Suleman.Patel@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 23.7% 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.

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.