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About us
Working for Mid Sussex District Council
Generally
Mid Sussex is a rural district in the southeast of England, situated within the county of West Sussex. The district contains three towns – Burgess Hill, East Grinstead and Haywards Heath. The latter of which is where the Council’s offices are located.
Mid Sussex is characterised by beautiful countryside. Nearly 50% of the district is within the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and over 10% is within the South Downs National Park.
The District Council can easily be reached by train from Brighton, London Victoria or St Pancreas and Cambridge. Haywards Heath itself has a prevalent pavement culture, shaped by its independent cafes, coffee shops retail offerings and restaurants.
Leisure centres, gyms and yoga studios are within walking distance of the Council’s offices. An outside gym and café can be found at one of our nearby award winning green spaces.
Neighbouring areas include Hassocks on the South Downs, historic Lewes and Horsham.
We have around 250 members of staff. Our housing stock now sits with Clarion Housing, however we retain an expansive commercial property portfolio, and are growing our temporary accommodation property offering by acquisition. We own the Orchards Shopping Centre in Haywards Heath, with Marks and Spencer as its anchor tenant.
There are four members in our senior management team, who are supported by seven Assistant Directors. Chief Council Officers - Mid Sussex District Council.
Our Corporate Plan sets out the Corporate Vision and priorities:
To be an effective Council delivering value for money services and helping to create a strong economy, environment and community’ illustrated by our stated priorities of:
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Effective and responsive services
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Sustainable economic growth
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Strong and resilient communities
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Financial independence
To deliver our planning and regulatory requirements we have two planning committees and one licensing committee cohort. Browse Meetings, 2000 - Mid Sussex District Council.
We have two scrutiny committees who hold the Administration to account.
Browse meetings - Scrutiny Committee People and Communities - Mid Sussex District Council
Browse meetings - Scrutiny Committee Place and Environment - Mid Sussex District Council
Our budget setting has just begun for 2025/26, and although challenging, the leadership family are confident that the Council can continue to thrive and provide quality services to our local community.
The Cabinet oversees and administers a generous community fund available to local groups and initiatives to deliver projects including play days, skatefests and sustainability events during school holidays and beyond. The Council (acting as Charity Trustees) also retains interests in historic and unique alms houses and open spaces.
Our Property and Commercial team have just completed a soft opening of a large leisure offering serving the district called the Arc. Brookleigh a large housing site in the district owned by Homes England with which the Council enjoys long standing strong strategic ties. We are working closely with private sector partners to develop and manage a high quality shopping centre place making space in Burgess Hill, to provide a shopping and entertainment hub for the district.
Futureproofing and positioning
Sussex has been accepted onto the devolution priority programme, with the region now working towards finalising the new unitary authority in 2028. This means Mid Sussex District Council will no longer exist and a new council – called a Unitary Authority – covering all the main services currently provided by the Council will operate in its place.
The vision for local government reorganisation is about ensuring that local governments continue to best support their communities. It is about delivering efficient services, ensuring new councils cover diverse areas, providing opportunities for the region, and moving towards a more positive future for all members of the community.
Our Members have directed our Chief Executive to submit a local government reform business case in support of the option for Mid Sussex to join with the Council’s at Crawley and Horsham. This is known as “Option B (ii)”. The Chief Officers of the Council are committed to ensuring that the Council maintains business as usual, whilst preparing our officer cohort to be in the best position to embrace and capitalise on the opportunities that local government organisation will bring.
Our communications strategy has been championed by our senior management team and gives a framework for informing and engaging with staff, residents and stakeholders. It facilitates and supports colleagues to break internal silos; and encourage growth and development as part of the Council’s continuous improvement. More broadly it assists with emphasising the strengths of Mid Sussex helping us to inform our transition and support our teams through the Local Government Reorganisation process.
Politically
The Council is in no overall political control (since 2023), resulting in a collective decision making culture. We have five Cabinet Members, four Liberal Democrat and one Independent, all holding specific portfolios. Your Councillors - Mid Sussex District Council. The Executive Leader of the Council is Councillor Robert Eggleston. We have 48 Elected Members, and we support colleagues in 24 Parish and Town Councils across the district.
We are preparing for Mayoral and County Council Elections in May 2026.
The Team
There are currently eight fee earners covering regulation, property and general public law work, and delivering high profile high value corporate projects as set out in the Council’s corporate plan.
Many of the team have come from private practice, and the two senior members of the team also act as Deputy Monitoring Officers. Most of the team will hold express delegated authority from the Assistant Director of Governance to make decisions or act as Proper Officers.
The Governance team have collectively agreed and committed to a set of ambitions, visions and objectives:
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Partnering with the Business (Relationships and Understanding)
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Proactive not Reactive
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Examining and Improving Processes (Self Service and Digitisation and Automation)
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Measuring and Demonstrating Effectiveness
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Developing ourselves and our skills
Our fee earners are supported by a team of three paralegals who are available to support them with research work, note taking and documentation preparation. Our paralegals work closely with the legal team, and, as part of their career development are being trained to support information governance statutory requirements, elections support and Member services requirements. In addition, we have a dedicated full time practice administrator, who manages our files, and diaries and is available to minute meetings.
The Assistant Director for Governance currently personally attends service meetings with our estates and planning teams to identify and support innovative service provision and business partnering. It is anticipated that this blueprint will roll out across the Council, ensuring that the legal team are engaged at the outset of any project or initiative. To support our key stakeholders, the team attend the office in support of the business, and to work closely with clients, peers and juniors. We pride ourselves on operating a flat structure and encouraging open communication. We welcome innovation, and understand and embrace fluid career goals.
We have a brand new collaborative office space to facilitate agile working and hot desking and are embracing AI prompt engineering and alternative service provisions to innovate and improve our service offering in areas such as contract review assistance, legal research, document summarization and compliance monitoring.
All fee earners have access to Practical Law and Westlaw for research purposes, and use the IKEN case management system. There is no corporate requirement for fee earners and case handlers to time record. We celebrate performance based on business support and relationships, not hours spent at desks.
We practice and demonstrate O shaped principles (Mindset and Attributes — O Shaped) and the team have all completed their Insights Discovery® | Official flagship product | Insights insights profile as part of our commitment to high performance and leadership development.
We are Lexcel Practice Management accredited.
The breadth and variety of work we do
As an in-house legal team, we rise to challenges daily. Between us we are managing in excess of 400 live files, which cover licensing, assets of community value, land registration, planning and planning enforcement, debt management, judicial reviews, anti-social behaviour complaints, housing management advice and action, grant of commercial leases, occupation and refurbishment of community buildings, finalising and enforcement of planning agreements, agency agreements, procurement processes and challenges and the creation of enforceable and robust contracts for Council services.
We are instructed in high profile high value project work including supporting a service critical variation to the Council’s waste contract, facilitating the purchase of temporary accommodation to assist with homelessness statutory requirements, corporate requirements arising from fraud prevention, and the creation of a joint venture to regenerate a local shopping centre.
In parallel we work closely with the business, reviewing processes to facilitate transparent and prompt decision making for our client teams.
Our Deputy Monitoring Officers advise on public law and constitutional matters, to protect and further the aims and principles of the Constitution. They support the Monitoring Officer function to address Member Complaints, Local Commissioner and Whistleblowing functions of the Council.
Support and Employee Engagement
Over the last 12 months, we have been working hard to develop our internal employee engagement. We have regular Council wide updates (by newsletter or teams calls) with the Chief Executive. A cross Council communications champions group promotes information sharing and highlights news stories and challenges. The Leadership Forum meets once every six weeks to facilitate matrix and joint working, alongside our five corporate networks who focus on equalities, climate change and digital requirements, and the team managers touchpoints.
Those new to local government or in their first job are provided with the early careers support network. All of this, together with our development drop in sessions demonstrate our culture of knowledge sharing and support.
The Council is committed to Professional Conversations for all staff. This important part of employee engagement covers all elements of the employees’ journey, not just performance against objectives. The discussion will explore and understand wellbeing, training and development, equality issues, and opportunities. This is a dedicated safe space for staff to highlight where good outcomes have been achieved through their work and, for the purposes of continual growth and personal development, explore and test where things could have been done differently.
All staff have free and confidential access to an award winning Employee Assistance Programme via Vita Health Group. Travel costs (including at peak time) can be mitigated by accessing our corporate membership to Easit.
We have partnered with Calm to offer free 24/7 access to meditations, sleep stories, music and more self-care resources.
Annual leave entitlement will be up to 34 days per year (pro rata) plus bank holidays. Under the current leave policy compassionate leave, study leave, and unpaid authorised leave is available.
The Council offers an excellent pension plan. Scheme Benefits | Business and economy | Hampshire County Council.
