Fiona Anthony

Fiona is the Professional and Practice Development Manager for nplaw and is also nplaw’s Training Principal, with responsibility for our trainee solicitors and apprentices.

Experience:

Fiona undertook her training contract in private practice and, after qualifying as a solicitor, spent two years in a local firm dealing with family and employment work. She then moved to Norfolk County Council’s Legal Department to specialise in child protection and adoption and was a member of the Law Society’s Children Panel.

Following a period of maternity leave, Fiona became a lecturer teaching law on various degree courses and qualified as a teacher. At the same time, she was an Independent Member of Norfolk Police Authority for four years and a non-executive director of a housing association for six years. Fiona has also been a member of the Institute for Learning’s Professional Practice Panel, hearing disciplinary cases against teachers in further education institutions. She was appointed as Independent Person for a district council under the Localism Act in 2012, a role which saw complaints against district and parish councillors referred to her for her views to be taken into consideration when determining whether they had breached their council’s Code of Conduct. For about 10 years, she was also a non-executive director of a healthcare community interest company, having a seat at board level representing the patients’ voice.

Since joining nplaw, Fiona has developed expertise in the area of compulsory purchase, streamlining the organisation’s processes, producing guidance notes and keeping lawyers and clients up-to-date with the many recent changes in the law. She prepares and delivers training in this area across the country and produced training materials for CILEx Law School to train the staff of a major public sector organisation in CPOs, which has involved writing two manuals on “Compulsory Purchase Policy and Procedure” and “Compulsory Purchase Compensation and Valuation”, delivering a series of live and recorded webinars and writing assessments.

More recently Fiona has become the Training Director of Lawyers in Local Government and she sits on the Law Society’s Education and Training Committee. She is also a member of the Barrister Apprenticeship Trailblazer Group.

Specialist Areas:

• Compulsory purchase orders
• Training

Qualifications:

• University of East Anglia – LL.B (Hons)
• Admitted as a solicitor in 1991
• University of East Anglia – Master’s Degree in Family Justice
• Teaching qualifications – DTLLS (City College Norwich) and QTLS