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Meet Jennifer Hankinson - Associate & Head of Development, Housing & Regeneration (Property) Team

Job Description
Jennifer Hankinson is an associate who specialises in housing and regeneration property law and she heads up the Housing & Regeneration (Property) Development team here at Forbes. Jennifer is experienced in a wide variety of areas of property work in the housing and regeneration sector including sales of land, acquisitions, site acquisitions, s106 agreements (and variations), licence for works, golden brick acquisitions, development agreements, easements, leases (commercial and supported living), surrender of leases, management agreements, open market sales, shared ownership plot sales, assignments, staircasing, boundary and title issues, housing management queries, historic rectification work, bulk securitisation/disposal/acquisition, and construction elements such as easements, utility agreements (s104, s185, s38, s278), licences for works/alterations, consents and release from covenants.

Sector insight / experience
Jennifer has worked as an in-house lawyer for a registered provider for almost 5 years before joining Forbes and so has a wealth of expertise and experience she brings to the role. Prior to Jennifer's qualification as a solicitor she also worked in the private sector, bringing wider commercial expertise. As part of her in-house role she provided input and assistance in terms of policies, procedures, financial appraisal, asset details and review. She also established and managed an external legal panel of solicitors.

This insight means Jennifer is more solution-focused and practical in her approach and is keen to work with her clients as part of their team.

Describe yourself in three words
Conscientious, practical, driven

In a team environment what role do you usually take on?
I am very much a team player and our ever-growing team here at Forbes provides for a great working environment. I head up the Development team but approach this in an inclusive way valuing the views of those in the team equally and ensuring that all members 'buy-in' to what you are collectively achieving.

Typical day in the office
My days in the office can be incredibly varied. It can vary from a number of internal meetings and reviews to dealing with a variety of property queries / issues / completions / quotes. We often have clients pop-in or I go to visit them to run through their needs generally or a specific file or attend a site visit. I enjoy also attending scheme openings so you really get an idea of how your role can assist to achieve this. For some clients we provide 'work from your office' days as part and again this is a very different environment but I enjoy the interaction.

In short - there is no one day the same.

What do colleagues say is your best quality?
Helpful - I try to instill a good learning environment and culture within the team and so have regular updates to enable me to help and coach them to achieve their potential.

Interesting fact about you others may not know?
A lot of people may not know I am a twin - my twin sister and I are non-identical though which means we can't trick people which I sometimes think would be fun, especially at school!

Favourite holiday destination
I don't feel I have seen enough of the world to pick a favourite destination yet - though I have my honeymoon coming up in December so this may change my mind!

Hobbies and interests
I do enjoy travelling and seeing new places and experiencing the culture. I also have quite a large family who I love spending time with and in my spare time enjoy baking - particularly novelty cakes (I tend to get volunteered for family birthdays). I have very recently got married which took up a great deal of my spare time and so I am currently enjoying getting back to normality and looking forward to our honeymoon.

Learn more about our Housing & Regeneration department here

Introducing ASB and varying existing possession orders

Questions we have been asked this month