NPLAW - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Senior Solicitor
- Employment Law Specialist, and Elute Ogedegbe, One of Our Trainee Solicitors, Went to Stratford Upon Avon
- Senior Lawyer
After 15 years as a specialist employment lawyer, Andrew Brett has experience of advising on almost every type of employment law issue, including:
contracts and terms and conditions of employment;
employment rights;
discrimination (sex, race and disability);
whistleblowing (or protected disclosure);
working time and holiday disputes;
salary and wage disputes;
maternity rights;
restrictive covenants;
disciplinary and grievance hearings;
termination of employment, including unfair dismissal and redundancy claims;
ACAS negotiations and settlement agreements;
transfers of undertakings and TUPE;
trade union law and industrial action;
Schools Issues.
Andrew has particular expertise in discrimination and whistleblowing cases, and has sat as a legal advisor to an NHS Trust's Race Equality Commission.
Andrew is qualified to mediate all civil and commercial disputes and frequently mediates in workplace and employment disputes. He is a skilled advocate, and normally conducts his own advocacy at employment tribunals, which has the advantages for his clients of avoiding barristers' costs and ensuring consistency of advice throughout a case.
Andrew also advises on human rights, pensions, local government law, data protection law, the Freedom of Information Act, special educational needs and Care Act issues.
Andrew Brett has been busy writing for the Local Government Lawyer. His article Employment law and International Women's Day was published on 9th March 2018. Read more >
Andrew Brett, our employment law specialist, and Elute Ogedegbe, one of our trainee solicitors, went to Stratford upon Avon on 7th and 8th June to represent nplaw at the Society of Local Council Clerks' Leadership in Action Conference.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Leadership Team
- Subject Lead
- Subject Lead ( Property )
Bethany graduated from the University of East Anglia with a Bachelor of Laws (Honours) degree in 2015 and then went on to study with CiLex in Family Law, Probate Law and Company & Partnership Law. Bethany qualified as a Fellow of CILEx in April 2021.
As a member of the Child Protection Team, Bethany has dealt with pre-proceedings matters, discharge of care orders and revocation of placement orders and also has experience in issues regarding changes of surname and citizenship applications.
Bethany joined nplaw in September 2020 as a Trainee Solicitor. She is currently working with the Places Team, Planning Section.
Bethany joined nplaw as a Trainee Solicitor in September 2018 after graduating with a first in her law degree and completing the Legal Practice Course with a distinction. Whilst completing the LPC, Bethany was employed as a Judicial Assistant to a District Judge and Recorder. Through this, she secured experience within civil and family matters and developed a strong understanding of court processes.
Bethany is a Solicitor in our Child Protection Team and advises Children's Services in relation to all aspects of public law children matters including:
• care and supervision orders;
• emergency protection orders;
• placement and adoption orders;
• revocation of placement orders and discharge of care orders;
• recovery orders; and
• secure accommodation.
Caroline has worked in Local Government since starting as a solicitor for Babergh District Council in 2003. She worked her way up to the role of Senior Solicitor & Deputy Monitoring Officer for Babergh and Mid Suffolk District Councils. Her early focus was on contentious matters, both civil and criminal. She delivered advice across a broad range of local authority services, including planning, licensing, environmental protection, food safety, health & safety and housing, as well as providing support to the corporate organisation on regulatory and information law issues. She has conducted Standards Investigations and carried out many successful prosecutions in the Magistrates' Court in addition to attendance at the Land & Property Tribunal. Civil litigation matters include planning injunctions, housing cases including Court of Protection issues, and contractual disputes.
On taking on the Senior Solicitor role, her focus changed to planning law, both non-contentious and contentious, including judicial review. She also advised on strategic issues and governance matters, dealing with complaints under the Suffolk Code of Conduct. She became the regular adviser to Planning and Licensing Committees. The senior role entailed a managerial function in the authorities' integrated legal service and involved troubleshooting across the range of legal and administrative functions carried out by the team. Caroline was training principal for the authorities' trainee solicitors.
Job Titles:
- Senior Lawyer - Subject Lead
Chris joined nplaw in the role of Senior Lawyer in September 2021 and is working with the Planning and Environment Team.
Chris Burgess graduated with a law degree from London University and was articled in local government where he spent twelve years as an in-house lawyer at district and then county council level. Chris then spent 9 years working in the national planning team of a major international law firm acting on a whole host of planning, highway, compulsory purchase and common land and village green matters. Chris then joined a local law firm dealing with a mixed practice of planning, highways, and common land and commercial property matters.
In addition to being a qualified solicitor, Chris is a legal associate of the RTPI and has written articles and delivered speeches at conferences on topical planning law issues.
Chris specialises in all aspects of planning and highways law, and common land and compulsory purchase.
Qualifications
BA (Hons) History
LLB (Hons) Law
Chris Skinner was Practice Director of nplaw, the shared legal service for local authorities hosted by the County Council. He had helped set up nplaw in 2009 when he was heading up Great Yarmouth's legal team. In 2010, he and his colleagues from Great Yarmouth and Norwich City Councils joined nplaw and he became deputy to Victoria McNeill whom he succeeded as Practice Director at the end of 2016.
Chris was a very practical lawyer. No job was too lowly or too complex for him and he strongly supported junior and less experienced staff in their development. A charming and modest man, Chris also had a formidable reputation as a leading expert on regeneration work, particularly compulsory purchase, acting for clients across the UK.
Chris had expertise in planning, property and litigation and was skilled at using the law in innovative and unconventional ways to solve practical problems. In the 1990s, he was working in Great Yarmouth at a time when there was a national shortage of housing for the most deprived people in the UK. Yet many of the houses in Great Yarmouth were lying empty. Chris started a campaign to get these houses occupied by the people who needed them most and this led to an almost unique approach, for the time, to using compulsory purchase powers to solve relatively small, local but enduring problems.
Those who knew him well will not be surprised that at every stage of his illness, he always felt positive about his recovery. Never liking to be away from work for too long, Chris wrote three legal articles for national publications in the week before his untimely death.
Family was hugely important to Chris and he was never happier than when spending time with them. As well as family, Chris had many friends and colleagues throughout Norfolk and beyond. His loss will be a cause of great sadness for so many.
Claire is a Lawyer, in the Dispute Resolution and Governance Team, specialising in employment, governance and education law.
Claire qualified as a solicitor in July 2019 at one of the first ABS firms offering public sector legal services. After qualifying, Claire was responsible for a large caseload in litigation, education and adult social care. She joined NPLAW as a Lawyer in March 2020.
Prior to her training contract, Claire worked at nplaw as a legal officer in the Child Protection Team and the Public Law and Standards Team. She also spent a number of years working for Norfolk County Council's Children's Services. During this time Claire completed her Legal Practice Course part-time at the University of Law (Bloomsbury) and achieved a distinction.
Claire has a Bachelor's Degree in Law and a Master's Degree in Public International Law. She previously worked as a research assistant at the University of Nottingham and for the United Nations in France and Cambodia.
Qualifications:
• University of Lincoln - LL.B (Hons)
• University of Nottingham - LL.M in Public International Law
• Admitted as a solicitor in 2019
Damian qualified as a solicitor in 2011. He has a degree in Politics and History from the University of Liverpool, following which he attended the University of East Anglia (UEA) to complete the Graduate Diploma in Law. Damian has been based in Norfolk since graduating UEA, and during that time has achieved a Legal Practice Course with distinction and completed training with a local law firm.
Damian works in our property team using his experience in private practice to deliver commercially aware advice to nplaw's range of clients. His expertise includes Commercial and Agricultural property and the management of Trusts and Charities.
He particularly specialises in Empty Properties and Enforced Sales and has delivered training to Local Government Officers on the use of their powers.
Dan Miller was admitted as a solicitor on 18th May 2016. Dan joined nplaw as a legal officer in 2013 and started a "training lite" contract with us in 2014. Read more >
Darren joined NPlaw as Senior Lawyer (Dispute Resolution) in April 2022, qualifying as a solicitor in 1992 having previously been admitted as a Fellow of the Institute of Legal Executives, the study for which he completed as an external student whilst in full time employment initially in local government and then Eastern Electricity Board (as was) near Ipswich.
A period in private practice followed, initially in Thetford and then Norwich, at which both firms Darren's area of practice was predominantly litigation. He was appointed partner at each.
In 2001, Darren fulfilled a long-standing ambition to work for himself and set up his own practice in Bury St. Edmunds where he remained until 2015, specialising in commercial law including partnerships, construction and contractual matters. Following a brief period of employment in private practice and then the Divorce Unit at Bury St. Edmunds, Darren returned to local government as a solicitor (commercial) with Babergh District Council, within the Shared Legal Services based at West Suffolk House in Bury St. Edmunds. Alongside general contractual, procurement and state aid/subsidy control matters, he took responsibility firstly for the implementation of GDPR across (then) four councils in 2018, and then the move by St Edmundsbury Borough Council and Forest Heath District Council to single authority (West Suffolk Council) in 2019.
More recently, Darren has concentrated on procurement and subsidy control matters.
David has extensive experience in a wide variety of areas of law and worked in varied environments from legal aid practices, High Street firms , private practice and local authorities.
He works in Adult Social care and specialises in judicial review, ordinary residence and all care related matters.
He previously specialised in personal injury and family law becoming a member of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers and a member of the Solicitors Family Law Association.
He has presented cases in the High, County and Magistrates Court and is a trained mediator.
David has walked up several mountains, written two children's books and speaks Italian.
Job Titles:
- Lawyer / Planning & the Environment
Dorraine joined nplaw's planning team in September 2019 as a Legal Officer and has worked on Temporary Traffic Regulation Orders, Compulsory Purchase Orders and drafting and negotiating commercial developer agreements (section 278 Agreements). She subsequently moved to the Property Team to work as a Lawyer in March 2021.
Dorraine qualified as a solicitor in 2003 and worked in private practice for firms located in Norfolk and Suffolk and has experience of dealing with a wide range of residential conveyancing and property transactions including new build developments. This provided her with some insight into the planning process, including section 106 Agreements and conditional planning permissions.
Ellen joined nplaw as a Trainee Solicitor in September 2019 and is currently working with the Public Law Team.
Job Titles:
- Employment Law Specialist, and Elute Ogedegbe, One of Our Trainee Solicitors, Went to Stratford Upon Avon
Job Titles:
- Member of the Leadership Team
- Practice and Professional Development Manager
- Professional and Practice Development Manager
- Professional Development Manager
Fiona is the Professional and Practice Development Manager for nplaw and is also nplaw's Training Principal, with responsibility for our trainee solicitors and apprentices.
Experience:
Fiona undertook her training contract in private practice and, after qualifying as a solicitor, spent two years in a local firm dealing with family and employment work. She then moved to Norfolk County Council's Legal Department to specialise in child protection and adoption and was a member of the Law Society's Children Panel.
Following a period of maternity leave, Fiona became a lecturer teaching law on various degree courses and qualified as a teacher. At the same time, she was an Independent Member of Norfolk Police Authority for four years and a non-executive director of a housing association for six years. Fiona has also been a member of the Institute for Learning's Professional Practice Panel, hearing disciplinary cases against teachers in further education institutions. She was appointed as Independent Person for a district council under the Localism Act in 2012, a role which saw complaints against district and parish councillors referred to her for her views to be taken into consideration when determining whether they had breached their council's Code of Conduct. For about 10 years, she was also a non-executive director of a healthcare community interest company, having a seat at board level representing the patients' voice.
Since joining nplaw, Fiona has developed expertise in the area of compulsory purchase, streamlining the organisation's processes, producing guidance notes and keeping lawyers and clients up-to-date with the many recent changes in the law. She prepares and delivers training in this area across the country and produced training materials for CILEx Law School to train the staff of a major public sector organisation in CPOs, which has involved writing two manuals on "Compulsory Purchase Policy and Procedure" and "Compulsory Purchase Compensation and Valuation", delivering a series of live and recorded webinars and writing assessments.
More recently Fiona has become the Training Director of Lawyers in Local Government and she sits on the Law Society's Education and Training Committee. She is also a member of the Barrister Apprenticeship Trailblazer Group.
Specialist Areas:
nplaw's Practice and Professional Development Manager, Fiona Anthony, has become the new Training Director at Lawyers in Local Government (LLG). She will be a member of the Board of Directors at LLG as well as being involved in shaping future training events. Read more >
Fiona Anthony and Jenni Batten attended the excellent Empty Homes Network Annual Conference on 18 October in Birmingham. We were struck by the really warm welcome we received and the professionalism and dedication of the empty homes officers who attended for all over the UK. Fiona presented two sessions: "The latest on CPO … and… Read more >
Fiona Anthony will be speaking at two sessions at the Empty Homes Network Annual Conference on 18 October in Birmingham. Read more >
Jane Linley and Fiona Anthony delivered a course in London on Compulsory Purchase Orders: The Basics and Beyond on 13th October. This was fully booked with delegates attending from a number of different authorities. There was some excellent feedback and we are repeating the course on 23 November 2017 and 2 March 2018.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Leadership Team
- Senior Lawyer, Subject Lead
- Subject Lead
- Subject Lead ( Dispute Resolution )
Florence Clement-Harry trained and qualified as a barrister in Nigeria in 1988 before emigrating to the U.K whereupon she retrained and qualified as a solicitor in 2006. She had a brief spell in private practice with a local firm where she trained but has been working in local government ever since. During her time in private practice, Florence dealt with cases in immigration law, family law and employment law.
Florence has extensive experience in local authority litigation and regulatory work. She has dealt with cases in the county and magistrates' courts and sat as legal adviser to various licensing sub-committees during hearings. She has a special interest in housing litigation, homelessness and lately, housing disrepair claims. Florence believes in thorough case preparation, good file management and working with clients to achieve their desired outcome.
Florence has an LL.B (Hons) degree, a Diploma in Housing Studies (following which she achieved corporate membership of the Chartered Institute of Housing), and an LL.M in Transnational Oil, Gas and Energy Law which she obtained from the University of Derby in 2019.
Frances Wilson joined the property team at nplaw in March 2012 immediately after qualifying as a solicitor. Prior to joining nplaw, Frances worked as a paralegal and trained as a solicitor at a regional private practice.
Frances deals with a wide variety of commercial property work for our local authority clients, including negotiating and drafting leases and licences, acquisitions and disposals, dealing with all aspects of landlord and tenant matters and providing general property advice.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Leadership Team
- Team Lead, Special Projects
Our team of trainee solicitors had a great educational trip to our local courts' open day on 6th April. We listened to some fascinating talks, observed mock trials and sentencing and took a trip to the cells, amongst other things. It was really interesting to get out and about and to have the opportunity to… Read more >
We are tremendously proud to report that Hilary O'Keefe has won the James Hunt Prize for 2016. The prize is awarded by Gray's Inn each year for the best pupil performance at the final stage of the pupil advocacy course. Read more >
Job Titles:
- Member of the Leadership Team
- Team Lead
- Team Lead, Places Team
Job Titles:
- Member of the Leadership Team
- Team Lead
- Team Lead, Dispute Resolution & Governance Team
Job Titles:
- Head
- Planning and Environmental Law Team Lead, Was a Speaker at a Westminster Briefings Conference Entitled "Compulsory Purchase Orders
Jane Linley, Head of nplaw's Planning and Environmental Team, will be giving a talk on 4th October to members of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors in Cambridge on the subject of Compulsory Purchase Orders and Compensation. Read more >
Job Titles:
- Member of the Leadership Team
- Subject Lead
- Subject Lead ( Planning )
We are delighted that Jodie Cunnington-Brock and Bethany Stokes joined nplaw as trainee solicitors on September 10. Read more >
Jordan Hulse has been appointed as the new Junior National Lead for Lawyers in Local Government (LLG) at the AGM in March 2023. Jordan is a solicitor in nplaw's Planning Team, having undertaken his training contract with us and qualified in December 2022. We are delighted that Jordan will be taking up this role, as… Read more >
Job Titles:
- Director
- Formerly Assistant Director of Law and Governance at Norfolk County Council
- Head of Legal Services
Kat Hulatt appointed as Director Legal Services (nplaw) and Monitoring Officer
Mark Heatley, Sebastian Teterra and Matthew Barnett have successfully completed their period of recognised training with nplaw and qualified as solicitors at the beginning of March 2023. We are delighted that all three will be remaining at nplaw. Mark will be working with Kat Hulatt as a Research Solicitor; Sebastian has joined the Child Protection… Read more >
We are delighted that Naomi Rankin has been shortlisted in the category of Trainee Lawyer of the Year in the Norfolk and Norfolk Law Society's Excellence Awards for 2018. Read more >
Job Titles:
- Member of the Leadership Team
- Office Manager
We're delighted to announce that Phillip has been elected as the new Social Secretary for the Norfolk and Norwich Junior Lawyers Division and will be busy organising social events for the members of the NNJLD, including the Summer Ball. We wish Phillip every success in this role. Read more >
nplaw's Phillip Hopkins has made the final shortlist for the Lawyers in Local Government Junior Lawyer of 2016 Read more >
Job Titles:
- Member of the Leadership Team
- Subject Lead, Special Projects
Job Titles:
- Member of the Leadership Team
- Subject Lead
- Subject Lead ( Child Protection )
Job Titles:
- Member of the Leadership Team
- Subject Lead
- Subject Lead ( Governance )
Job Titles:
- Member of the Leadership Team
- Subject Lead
Job Titles:
- Member of the Leadership Team
- Team Lead
- Team Lead, People Team
Job Titles:
- Counsel for Governance
- Practice Director Will Be Speaking at the LLG Annual Governance Conference in London
Victoria McNeill, nplaw's practice director will be speaking at the LLG Annual Governance Conference in London on 4th and 5th November 2016 on the many governance challenges involved in local government devolution.
nplaw's Victoria McNeill is leading counsel for governance on the devolution proposals for Norfolk and Suffolk. Read more >