Sharon Long Email and Phone Number

As CEO and Clerk I manage a staff of eleven at a medium size local council looking after a portfolio of assets which includes Chorleywood Common, various village halls and a cemetery, with a Precept of £500k+. With 17 Councillors, 5 Committees and 1 working group, this a full time role! We have recently completed our Foundation award journey under the Local Council Award Scheme.

Working part time from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, I turned this small parish council with two Committees and two Working Groups from poor governance and compliance to one worthy of a Foundation Award under the Local Council Award Scheme. Other highlights include achieving a National Lottery grant to replace the safety surfaces in two playgrounds, working collaboratively with a grassroots youth football team to pursue a Football Foundation grant for pitch improvements and working closely with volunteers delivering a Community Garden.

I managed civic and democratic services in a large town council. This included Councillor liaison and training, preparing Committee papers, managing the Mayor's diary and organising civil events.

Covering maternity leave, I primarily looked after delivery of their project related work, comprising a proposed new cemetery and country park and a proposed new community hall and public car park, utilising my experience of development projects.

As a practice development lawyer I was responsible for looking after the knowledge management and business development needs of the partners and associates I worked with, primarily in the Freshfields’ London office. There was a particular emphasis on business development; my role was to assist the group in spotting industry trends and the key new policy and legal developments of application to our clients. I wrote many of our client publications, helped out on client presentations and pitches and wrote content for textbooks and other publications. I also fee earned from time to time, advising on complex environmental and planning issues, and also on various product regulation issues including product safety, labelling and marketing and consumer issues generally. Between March 2010 and October 2012 I also managed the firm’s Product Regulation Unit, a team of people who specialise in conducting multi-jurisdictional comparative law assessments. We utilised a global network of lawyers in over 160 countries. This involved preparing the relevant documentation to send to local counsel, providing guidance to them (to ensure consistent and appropriately detailed response), co-ordinating and quality controlling their responses and co-ordinating the delivery of the final work product, including the preparation of the comparative report, according to the client’s needs and the report’s intended audience. As the manager, I also took the lead on providing English and EU regulatory law advice to one of the firm’s key consumer products clients. I joined Freshfields in 2003 after seven years practising as a planning and environmental lawyer. Specialties: Environmental law, planning law, climate change law (including low carbon energy), product regulation, food law, consumer law, European law