Happy Holidays From Martin Searle Solicitors!
We’d like to wish all of our friends, clients, colleagues and stakeholder partners a fantastic Christmas and New Year.
As usual, instead of sending Christmas cards this year, we are making a donation to the Brighton Unemployed Centre Families Project, as well as throwing a fundraising Christmas party in aid of Adventure Unlimited – you can find all the details here.
2012 has been an exciting year for our firm, and we’ve continued to protect the rights of our employment and community care clients through our expert legal guidance.
Highlights this year include
- Securing a £200k plus settlement for a VP, involving complex equal pay issues
- Acting on behalf of an employer to enforce costs awards against two claimants, having showed they acted unreasonably in bringing claims against his company
- Securing a £100k plus settlement for a Director, including dealing with allegations of misconduct involving human rights aspects
- Recovering £25,000 for a client whose work was terminated by an Employment Agency after she announced that she was taking maternity leave
- Acting on behalf of an employer to appeal against an Employment Tribunal Judgment that he pay over £14,000 to the Claimant. The EAT upheld the appeal to the extent that the award was reduced to under £4,000. Part of the claim was remitted to be heard by another Tribunal but was settled for £1,500 before the hearing
- Winning a constructive dismissal claim for a care home manager who resigned after his Regional Director tried to manage him out, after he had exposed theft from service users. We recovered £9,500 compensation to reflect loss of earnings
- Recovering £35,000 for a Product Manager of a telecommunications company who was unfairly dismissed as a result of long-term sickness absence
- Securing current and retrospective NHS Continuing Healthcare funding awards for a number of individuals, each award saving the family about £40,000 a year and several awards covering periods of up to four years
- Negotiating agreements with Social Services about jointly owned family property, so that the property does not need to be sold to pay for care
- Acting in several Best Interest and Safeguarding matters to achieve an outcome that balances the vulnerable individual’s rights with Health & Social Services duties
- Assisting in securing meaningful packages of care to enable individuals to stay in their own home, or return home from hospital, rather than move to permanent care
We’ve also had a busy year of expansion, professional achievement and industry recognition
- Chloe Smith and Ian Maull joined the team
- Our firm won the Digital Media Campaign of the Year at the Gatwick Diamond Business Awards for our pregnancy and maternity awareness campaign “Mind The Bump”
- Fiona Martin was interviewed by Legal Network Television about controversial employment law changes
- Cate Searle was published in Private Client Advisor and the Journal of Adult Protection, and appeared on BBC Radio Sussex to discuss NHS Continuing Healthcare funding
- The team held a stall at the Let’s Do Business exhibition in Brighton and carried out an illuminating Social Media survey
- The firm sponsored the best employment law student at the University of Brighton, and Selina Tamrat joined us for a work placement to find out what employment lawyers really get up to;
- Cate Searle won Boss of the Year at the Sussex Business Awards
- We secured a new office at Basepoint in Crawley, offering employment law and community care law services to Gatwick and Crawley
- The firm passed our Lexcel audit again with flying colours, demonstrating our commitment to high quality legal advice and client care
- We provided over 120 hours of free legal advice to local people through our work with organisations such as Age UK, Brighton Housing Trust, Alzheimer’s Society, the Carers Centre, ESRA and Wired Sussex
What’s new in 2013?
Next year is going to be bigger and better than the last. In January we’ll be expanding into Eastbourne with our new offices in Hyde Gardens, an addition to our offices in Brighton, Croydon and Crawley.
We’re also refreshing the look of our website and logo – make sure to follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook or Google+ so you don’t miss out on the new look.
Please note that our office will close at 5.15pm on 21 December, and reopen at 9.00am on 2 January.
From all of the team here at Martin Searle Solicitors, we wish you a successful and prosperous 2013.
