Dudley Council’s legal services team has been nationally recognised for its excellent service.

The team was ‘highly commended’ in the Legal Team of the Year award in the Lawyers in Local Government (LLG) annual awards.

The award recognises a legal team who can demonstrate the highest levels of creativity, innovation, knowledge, client sensitivity and responsiveness along with contribution to corporate, diversity and community objectives.

Dudley’s Legal services works closely with elected members and teams across the council providing a range of legal advice and services.

The award entry focused on the contribution legal services has made to delivering the council’s corporate objectives, including regeneration projects such as the Metro, VLR and the Interchange, along with the modernisation of its own systems, which has made the service more efficient.

It highlighted the work carried out by the team during lockdown to transfer part of the local land charges register to HM Land Registry. Dudley is the first authority in the West Midlands to do this and it successfully went live in July last year.

The service has also been involved with the introduction of a Blue Badge Fraud Investigation pilot since November 2020, to eradicate the misuse of blue badges and enable registered holders to access parking within the borough. This has so far resulted in the seizure of 78 badges. Councillor Steve Clark, cabinet member responsible for legal services, said:

"Congratulations to everyone in legal services for achieving highly commended at these prestigious national awards. We’re extremely proud of them all.

"The team has maintained a consistent commitment to improving the lives of residents and visitors to the borough, as well as providing important advice and services to colleagues within the local authority.

"It has done this using modern and innovative approaches to its own systems and ways of working."

The award comes less than three months after the local land charges team was ‘highly commended’ in the Local Authority Searches Team of the Year Award category at the 2022 Land Data Local Land Charges Awards for Excellence.