The Legal 500

Work Department

Housing/personal injury/environmental.

Position

Sarah is a partner who runs the social housing law department. Her specialist areas include: policy drafting and advice; disrepair claims; voids and maintenance management; landlord and tenant disputes; risk management and health and safety, including gas safety and access issues; ASBOs/ASBIs; possessions; tenancy issues, homelessness and the Human Rights Act. Sarah attends court to undertake her own advocacy in possession and anti-social behaviour matters, emergency and on notice. Sarah spends a large part of her time providing consultative advice, and writing/reviewing client policy for the management of property for registered social landlords and local authorities. She provides training designed to avoid future claims and keep housing associations and local authorities abreast of the latest legal developments. In this aspect, she works as part of BLM’s wider group providing legal risk management advice to many public and private sector clients. She is regularly invited as an external speaker at housing events. Sarah was one of the committee members charged with drawing up the pre-action protocol for housing disrepair and acts as a consultant for the Northern Housing Consortium. She is the author of ‘Housing Disrepair Toolkit’ which has become the standard reference work for many housing associations and local authorities and she advises Sweet & Maxwell legal publishing groups on matters relating to social housing. She has been invited to join Alarm’s new social housing group and to sit as a board member for St Vincent’s Housing Association. She also acts as an adviser to various benchmarking groups for maintenance issues.

Career

Trained Irvings Solicitors; qualified 1997; previously a nurse with postgraduate qualifications in intensive care; partner Irvings 1999-2000; partner Berrymans Lace Mawer presently; adviser for Northern Housing Consortium presently; publications of note include: ‘Toolkit on disrepair for Northern Housing Consortium’; appointed as a consultant to the Repairs Benchmarking Group for North & East London Housing Associations and Local Authorities.

Member

Liverpool Law Society; Association of Women Solicitors; board member and diversity champion for St Vincent’s and recently appointed chair of the operations committee.

Education

Royal Free Hospital (1989 RGN); Hammersmith Hospital (1990 ENB100 ITU); 1995 Legal Practice Course – distinction; College of Law, Chester; Liverpool University (1993 LLB Hons Law); De Montfort University (2001 Dip Environmental Law).

Leisure

Interior design, baking, travel, music, qualified scuba diver.

Practice Areas

Environment litigation; Personal injury - defendant; Social housing