Governance

Expert corporate governance lawyers. We ensure compliance with your legal obligations while guiding you through key structural changes.

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Our experienced corporate, charity, housing and sports governance lawyers have successful track records in developing effective governance solutions for organisations of all types and sizes.

Running a business or a governing body is complex and involves making major decisions that change lives. That’s why it’s key to establish and implement rules which allow you to successfully manage your organisation.

We can help you to navigate through your existing governance structures and remain compliant with your constitutional, regulatory and statutory obligations.

As part of our extensive corporate law team — which is one of the largest and most active in the UK and recognised in the top tier of The Legal 500 2025 for corporate and commercial matters — we can support you with a wide range of key challenges including business planning and structuring, constitutional issues, reorganisations, refinancing, amalgamations, group structures, joint ventures and partnerships, in addition to providing general strategic advice.

We also offer expert company secretarial services to free-up your time to focus on the big issues. These include acting as registered office, handling company incorporations, filing documents at Companies House, maintaining statutory registers and other responsibilities and duties of directors.

For us, governance isn't just a periodic, box-ticking exercise. We bring the requisite experience and cross-fertilisation of ideas needed to make governance truly work for you and your organisation.

Meet the team

Experienced governance lawyers

Our governance expertise is led by Partners Ruth Hargreaves, Graeme Hughes and Rupert Gill.

They work with businesses, governing bodies and charities of all types and sizes, including public and private companies, registered providers of social housing, community benefit societies, charities, sports national governing bodies (NGBs) and international federations (IFs), local sports clubs and professional practices as well as senior leaders including directors and shareholders.

Ruth leads our sports governance specialism through her extensive work with NGBs and IFs. For well over a decade, she’s acted as a trusted advisor on constitutional and corporate governance matters, as well as acquisitions, mergers, disposals and investments across the sport sector.

Graeme leads our charity team and has over 15 years’ experience in advising on the governance structures of charitable organisations of all types and sizes, including those that operate internationally.

Rupert leads our housing and communities sector team. Recognised as a Leading Partner by The Legal 500 2025, he advises registered providers on a wide range of corporate legal matters and provides specialist guidance on corporate governance, constitutional issues, changes to model rules and intra-group agreements.

Meet the team

Ruth Hargreaves

Partner

Graeme Hughes

Partner, Head of Charities, Not-for-Profits and Social Enterprises

Rupert Gill

Partner, Head of Housing & Communities

Contact our team

Recognised as a top tier firm in The Legal 500 2025

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Our approach to governance

We recognise the importance of tailored advice and best practice and are here to guide you along the journey towards effective governance.

Our approach is holistic — we always take time to understand the issues affecting your business or governing body and provide advice that’s both practical and commercial. Governance is meaningless unless it's done in a way that supports and benefits the business. There's no point in us writing the perfect policy if that policy isn't then used. In fact, having a governance structure that isn't followed is worse than not having one at all.

This ensures that you can operate in a way that’s both compliant and helps to achieve your goals. It also allows us to develop model documents that can be rolled out across a group of companies or — in the case of sporting governing bodies — the relevant clubs and local associations.

Examples of our clients include:

Housing associations — for which we undertake governance reviews to support their obligation to achieve a certain rating by their Regulator.
NGBs — where we've helped to support their compliance with the Code for Sport Governance.
County golf associations — that might be incorporating to benefit from limited liability or merging men's and ladies' sections.
AIM-listed companies — such as NWF Group plc and large family businesses that wish to maintain a tight shareholding structure, particularly in light of changes to the inheritance tax regime.