12 College Place

Employment Team

• Peter Doughty (1988) *
  Head of Team
• Malcolm Gibney (1981) #
• Mark Balysz (1995)#
• Peter Savill (1995)
• Jeremy Burns (1996) *
• Naveen Agnihotri (2001) *
• Alice Missions (2005)
• Lena Rebane (2006)
• Tom Kirk (2007)

* These Barristers accept direct public access instructions. For more information on this service please click on the link below :

Our Direct Public Access page.

# Denotes health and safety only

Our Work

The Employment Team at 12 College Place serves individuals, trade unions, local authorities and business clients in this ever-changing area of law. Employment Law presents pitfalls for the unwary and necessitates a detailed understanding of the opaque and increasingly complex legal provisions of both domestic and European origin.

The Team provides a specialist drafting, advisory and advocacy service that is available from the outset of any problem through to its final resolution. As a Team we aim to provide pro-active advice in developing situations to prevent problems before they arise. Many difficulties can be avoided with timely advice and with advance planning.

Members have extensive advocacy experience across the full range of employment related issues from the Employment Tribunal to the Employment Appeal Tribunal and the Court of Appeal. Members have also appeared in, and chaired, disciplinary hearings.

Fee Structures

The Chambers' Employment Team believes that transparency on the subject of fees is vital for both the professional and the lay client.

Above is an example of the typical fees* charged by members of our Employment Team. All fees are negotiated on a case by case basis dependent on the amount of work Counsel might reasonably be expected to do for a particular hearing. These figures are therefore a guide to our likely charges and apply to cases heard in Southampton - for cases out of the area there would be some extra charges to cover Counsel's expenses and travel.

Chambers always takes a flexible attitude to fees taking into account the means of each client and, when cases settle, we charge for the work that has been undertaken rather than strictly enforcing the idea of 'brief delivered'. This can lead to significant cost reductions on a case by case basis should matters settle well in advance of a hearing.

* Please note that these fees do not apply to Public Access work.

Training Seminars

Our Team regularly delivers seminars both in house and here in Chambers. All of these are CPD accredited by the Bar Council and the Law Society. We are always willing to discuss any specific training needs that our clients need addressing - please feel free to discuss these with any of our Clerks.

Employment Blog

For the latest discussions by our Team please have a look at our Employment Blog located at :

http://12cpemploymentteam.blogspot.com/

Clients With Limited Means

This team operates an affordable scheme for Claimants of Limited Means to enable them to be represented at tribunals. For more details of how this scheme operates please click here

Conditional Fee Arrangements

Chambers are also willing to accept cases under CFA funding where counsel could be treated as a disbursement.  For details please click here.

Mediation

Two members of the team are accredited mediators.
Peter Doughty is accredited and Naveen Agnihotri is a key member of the local HMCS mediation scheme and experienced mediator.

Experience

The former head of the team now sits as a full time Chairman and Jeremy Burns sits as a part-time Chairman in Central London. Team members are on the Junior Counsel to the Crown (provincial panel). The Team are members of the Employment Lawyers Association and some are members of the Employment Law Bar Association.

The team has expertise in the following areas:

• Unfair dismissal
• Discrimination
• Discrimination on the grounds of religion or beliefs
• Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation
• Age discrimination
• Equal pay
• Redundancy
• Transfer of undertakings
• Restrictive covenants, confidentiality/trade secrets
• Disciplinary hearings/ADR
• Grievance procedures
• Wages claims
• Wrongful dismissal
• Working time
• Part-time and fixed term contract regulations
• Drafting contracts of employment/staff handbooks
• Immigration/visa requirements
• Improvement act notices and health & safety issues
• Employment mediation
• "Whistle Blowing" and protected disclosure
• Reserve Forces cases