Ms Flora Mewies > Ward Hadaway LLP > Leeds, England > Lawyer Profile

Ms Flora Mewies

0113 205 6797 flora.mewies@wardhadaway.com

Work Department

Employment

Position

Partner

Career

Flora is a Partner in the Employment team in the Leeds office.

She is an employment lawyer with experience of a wide variety of contentious and non-contentious employment issues. Flora also specialises in immigration advice to organisations and individuals.

Flora spends time getting to know clients and their business in order to provide commercially-driven solutions to the issue at hand.

She has experience in a wide range of employment matters, such as disciplinary and grievance issues, restructuring and redundancy exercises, TUPE issues, exit strategies and advising on settlement agreements, acting primarily on behalf of employer clients.

Flora has been involved in the defence of a range of Employment Tribunal claims, including unfair and wrongful dismissal, race, sex, pregnancy and disability discrimination, whistleblowing and unlawful deduction from wages, with experience of conducting her own advocacy in the Employment Tribunal.

She also advises on immigration issues, including sponsorship and the Points-Based system, Tier 1 exceptional talent endorsement and visa applications, Tier 2 applications including Intra Company Transfers, EU rights of free movement and permanent residence applications, joining family members in the UK, settlement and citizenship, preventing illegal working and race discrimination.

Flora regularly presents at internal and external seminars and provides training to HR professionals, managers and directors and carries out internal compliance audits for clients.

She has spent time on secondment to the HR Department of a leading private healthcare provider where she assisted with providing advice on day to day employment issues as well as a strategic project involving a number of sensitive dismissals requiring input from various regulatory bodies.

Flora has specialist experience in a number of different sectors including:

Recruitment – Flora advises both recruitment agencies and their clients on all aspects of employment, HR and visas as well as drafting terms of business for placement of temporary and permanent candidates and consulting companies.

Private healthcare – Flora advises providers of care homes, rehabilitation services, secure services and specialist education facilities on a variety of employment and immigration issues including safeguarding issues involving the police and the CQC, whistleblowing allegations and routinely defends Employment Tribunal cases on their behalf.

Immigration – Flora helps employers to avoid breaches of immigration law by advising upon correctly carrying out right to work checks and managing employees whose right to work has expired. She also guides employers and individuals through the complicated sponsorship and visa application process.

Transport – Flora regularly advises transport advisers on the TUPE implications of winning or losing a tender to provide services including harmonisation of terms following a TUPE transfer.

Sport – Flora advises and works with organisations to defend Employment Tribunal claims which can include claims brought by office staff, coaching staff and players.

Tech – Flora has expertise in the digital technology sector advising both start-ups and established businesses on a wide range of employment and HR issues as well as using immigration routes to recruit and retain staff.