Securing a coveted spot on a £400m government legal panel has opened up new opportunities for PwC, its new legal chief has said, as the accountancy giant forges ahead with ambitious growth plans.

Crown Commercial Service (CCS), Whitehall’s procurement arm, announced in March that PwC, which bid as part of a consortium with Holman Fenwick Willan, Howes Percival and Sharpe Pritchard, would be among 12 ‘tier one’ suppliers to provide general legal advice services.

Employment specialist Ed Stacey, who took over from Shirley Brookes as PwC’s head of legal services last month, told the Gazette that the panel win has given the organisation a helpful ‘badge’.

He said: ‘We’re still relatively unknown to a lot of people in terms of our legal services.’ However, PwC is now ‘winning things we would not have won 12 months ago or longer’. These wins include a private sector mandate ‘worth tens of millions of pounds’.

PwC legal services has 17 partners, 31 directors and a 350-strong team in total, based in London, Belfast, Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester. Advice areas include cybersecurity and data protection, corporate reorganisation, disputes, employment, immigration, mergers and acquisitions and pensions.

Stacey said PwC is seeking to expand its services in the regions. The business is looking to grow in London, ‘but potentially not as fast as the rest of the UK’, he said.

The accountancy giant is also seeking to expand its US presence, where it offers non-US legal services through ILC Legal, which opened in Washington DC in September.