Team size: Five   

What significant projects or deals has the legal team worked on in the past year?  Can you provide examples of successful outcomes or major accomplishments?  

In the last 12 months, the Legal and Co Sec team have helped deliver some really exciting growth opportunities for Unite Students.  These include our first ever joint venture framework agreement with a University, where we are partnering with Newcastle University to redevelop Castle Leazes student accommodation with 2,000 beds of high-quality affordable accommodation for students in an amazing setting in Newcastle.   The team has also helped deliver another successful equity raise, through a placing and retail offer, raising gross proceeds of just under £300m.   

Can you sum up the team culture or ethos? 

As possibly one of the smallest legal and co sec teams in the FTSE 100 (just five of us), our team  ethos is all about ensuring open, straightforward and direct connection throughout all levels of the business, whether with the PLC Group Board and Committees, our functional heads of departments and operational city teams, through to our front line teams who work directly with the 70,000 students living with us, often their first time living away from home.  With such a small team, we realise we can’t do everything and be everywhere and so ensure our focus is driven by one of Unite Student’s core values, “doing what’s right” 

Apart from legal matters, has the team worked on other company initiatives?   

The team is fortunate to work across many and varied company initiatives beyond legal.  These include working on our standalone Sustainability Report (giving us the ability to provide more detail on our positive impact beyond the more formal annual report sustainability reporting), designing the training for our ethics and compliance programs (so it’s tailor made for our business and lands right) and supporting on share based long-term incentives and savings plans (helping bringing share ownership to our employees).