Member Article

Law firm supports FE College merger

Teams of lawyers from five different departments of law firm Clarke Willmott LLP helped to ensure the smooth merger of Bridgwater College with Somerset College in Taunton bringing the prospect of a Somerset University a step closer.

Creating the ninth biggest Further Education College in the country required specialists in Employment and HR, banking, corporate law, construction and property from within Clarke Willmott, who have offices in Bristol and Taunton.

Over a number of months the Clarke Willmott teams helped to achieve the long-awaited, high profile merger to form a college that will cater for more than 26,000 students with 1,500 staff.

Kevin Jones of Clarke Willmott said: “We were delighted to be trusted with such an important piece of work for longstanding clients, Bridgwater College.

“Although we have been retained by Bridgwater College for many years, we were very pleased to receive the instructions for what will be one of the largest FE College mergers in the country this year. With so many different aspects to get right we had a number of Clarke Willmott teams working together in order to achieve what was ultimately an outstanding outcome for the College”.

Clarke Willmott teams are continuing to work with the college, supporting the organisation with post-merger support.

The colleges officially merged on June 14 and the move is regarded by many as a pre-cursor to the organisation obtaining full university status in the next few years.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Clarke Willmott .