Meet the team

Ian acts for a wide range of private and public sector clients and advises on all areas of employment and discrimination law. He has considerable experience in acting for NHS Trusts and healthcare clients generally and also advises employers in the education, retail and insurance sectors. He has a particular interest in whistleblowing and all areas of discrimination, including disability and age.

Ian regularly speaks at conferences and seminars and provides bespoke in-house training on a range of employment and equality issues.

Ingrid is very much a trusted and go-to legal advisor. She is a key member of the employment, pensions and immigration team at Weightmans, providing both employment law and business immigration law support and advice to clients.

Ingrid is pragmatic, personable and solutions-focused. She has significant experience in the legal profession and truly focusses on what her clients' needs and objectives are. She is also very driven in building long standing relationships with clients and continues to work across many sectors.

Employment

Ingrid covers all areas of non-contentious employment matters and has particular experience in redundancies, restructuring/reorganisation, senior executive/management disputes and employment/TUPE support to corporate and real estate transactions. She has significant sector experience within retail and hospitality, construction, transport and logistics and owner managed business/SMEs.

She conducts her own advocacy and manages tribunal claims ranging from areas of unfair dismissal, protected disclosures, disability discrimination, redundancy and re-organisations, sex discrimination, TUPE and wasted costs.

Ingrid is also a key member of Weightmans' HR Rely team – offering price certainty and employment law solutions for our clients.

Ingrid also has previous experience in legal sales and growth strategy, training and supervision of employment colleagues and the development of cross-selling opportunities

Business immigration

Ingrid is experienced in both employment law and immigration law, allowing for seamless advice across both disciplines.

Her immigration expertise extends to assisting with compliance, policy drafting and implementation and strategy and the prevention of illegal working. She also has experience in providing global immigration advice and support to a variety of sectors including retail, transport, hospitality, education and construction.

Recent business immigration work highlights

• Advising higher education authority in respect of new points based system and assisting with policy implementation and strategy
• Advising FTSE 100 company in respect of compliance duties and immigration/discrimination considerations within recruitment practices
• Advising construction sector in respect of immigration rules and compliance
• Supporting transport and logistical businesses with compliance and advising in respect of immigration rules and the prevention of illegal working
• Advising further education authority in respect of sponsorship duties and application process

Memberships

• Employment Lawyers Association (ELA)
• Immigration Law Practitioners Association (ILPA).

Andrew is a Fellow of the CIPD and has a masters’ degree in Human resource management and industrial relations. His experience covers both the public and private sectors and includes: Tribunal advocacy, consulting and negotiating with trade unions, training, mediation, seminar presentations and advising on employment law. Andrew joined Weightmans in October 2010 from EEF (now Make UK) where he was the HR and legal leader for the Midlands.

Our lead Health Safety and Environment expert, Joanne has over 30 years working as a safety professional, advising large corporates and SMEs across many different sectors. However, her specialisms are travel, hospitality and leisure, retail, and property/facilities management.

She also has extensive experience of advising health and social care clients (such as care providers, and GP and dental practices), financial services organisations and manufacturing businesses.

Joanne is a Chartered member of the Institute of Occupational Safety & Health (CMIOSH) and is listed on the HSE’s Occupational Safety and Health Consultants Register (OSHCR), She is also a Practitioner of the Institute of Environmental Management (PIEMA).

Susan joined Weightmans in 2015 from a Chartered University where she was Director of Legal and Secretariat (2008 – 2015). As the manager of an in-house legal, student complaints, academic appeals and breaches and information governance teams, Susan was directly responsible for managing and advising on strategic legal, regulatory and compliance risk.

Susan currently works with Higher Education institutions to provide legal advice and pragmatic support to University clients on student and staff related legal matters.

Susan’s credentials in HE legal practice include:

• A track record in building collegiate relationships with University central services and in working directly with academic colleagues on legal issues;
• Wide experience of delivering collaborative projects on a range of University issues.
• Practical and proportionate adviser on solutions and approaches to legal issues that impact on HE services, organisational performance, external contractual relationships, research projects and University partnerships that have led to or may lead to legal dispute.
• Developing innovative proposals to support University colleagues to address legal challenges: e.g. legal processes for in-house teams; legal risk assessment; template documents, legal process review, developing and delivering bespoke training.
• Susan specialises in supporting HE managers on the implementation of solutions in response to legal issues and acting as an addition to the HEI’s team.
• Susan is the third member of the Weightmans HE team to be recruited from an in-house position.

Jawaid is the head of HR Rely, Regional Office Head and an employment Partner. He has spent several years in industry and understands the need for commercial advice.

Jawaid specialises in equal pay and advising on major restructuring projects and claims made against Embassies.

Jawaid is totally focussed on ensuring our HR Rely clients are always delighted with the service they receive and is ultimately responsible for ensuring that they are. He is always happy to be contacted directly by clients with any feedback and you can rest assured that he will deal with any issues promptly.

Adele has extensive quality experience advising, training and representing SME and Corporate business’ on employee relations and all ancillary employment law issues.

Her expertise and insight allied to her friendly manner fosters a very good rapport with clients so she quickly grasps their business requirements, values and culture. She focuses on the key issues. She forensically breaks cases down delivering clear and pragmatic solutions tailored to the needs of your business. She acts for a host of loyal manufacturing and retail brands, blue chip companies and SMEs.

Her considerable expertise in the manufacturing and retail sectors, includes assisting them with complex change management programmes, advising, supporting and coaching teams of HR Managers in significant restructures with reputational implications for their business whilst enhancing their brand.

Adele is an experienced and persuasive advocate in the Employment Tribunal. She has many successful experiences of judicial and private mediation. Adele regularly leads on bespoke training courses delivered in-company where she is an engaging presenter.

Highlights include:

• Successfully advising, proactively supporting and coaching a team of HR Managers in harmonising and changing terms and conditions of employment of 10,000 employees. The international brand increased weekend working to 3 in 4 weekends. Removal of bonus payments and introduction of living wage foundation pay resulting in increased staff at business critical times and reducing the overall wage bill;
• Advising and supporting and coaching HR in significant restructure to cut 7500 jobs worldwide and 350 jobs in UK with reputational implications for the international brand resulting in a reduction in wage bill;
• Successfully managing capability termination of long-standing employee with significant mental health illness and numerous suicide attempts, preventing future grievances and significant liability for disability discrimination;
• Successfully settling multiple lurid allegations of sex discrimination which had the ability to adversely affect the reputation of a national business and saving approx. £85K in damages;
• Successfully advising and defending unfair dismissal and sex discrimination claims involving a longstanding employee with significant final salary pension loss saving £100k in damages.