Chambers UK in focus: Employment

In the recently published Chambers 2025, our service lines once again performed strongly. We caught up with our Head of Employment, Stuart McBride, to look back on another successful year.

What makes this a standout year for the practice?

Our Employment team continues to advise a wide range of clients on all aspects of employment law – ranging from Employment Tribunal litigation to advising on major reorganisations, plus horizon-scanning for HR and in-house legal teams across the UK.

We have been consistently ranked as a Band 1 firm for Employment (South West) for many years and we are delighted to maintain this ranking in Chambers UK 2025. Esther Smith and I also maintained our individual rankings.

In our wider cross-national team, we have recorded some notable successes in Chambers UK. Our Manchester team was promoted to Band 2 from Band 3 this year for Employment (North West), with Ed and Liz Cotton both maintaining their individual rankings. We also held our position as recognised teams in Northern Ireland and also Scotland, where partner Jo Hennessy, head of our fast-growing Business Immigration team has an individual ranking to recognise her expertise. Following the launch of our Birmingham office a year ago and the hire of Charlie Rae from Shoosmiths over the summer, Charlie maintained his own individual Band 1 ranking for Employment (Midlands), while Legal Director Rebecca Jones, who joined us from Gowling WLG this summer, is still ranked as an Associate to Watch.

We were also very pleased to see us gain new ranking for Employee Share Schemes and Incentives: Employee Ownership (UK-wide), with Ben Watson achieving a Band 1 individual ranking.

What types of projects have you supported over the past 12 months?

Recent standout work for the team includes:

• Supporting a boutique hotel and restaurant on its appeal after the Home Office imposed a £40,000 civil penalty for illegal working.
• Successfully acting in urgent High Court interim injunction proceedings for alleged breaches of restrictive covenants, on behalf of an individual director following his move to a competitor business.
  
• Advising a national retailer on employment law aspects of the second-generation transfer of employees from its existing provider to its new outsourced logistics partner in the UK.
•  Advising on the employment law aspects of the rescue of high street and online optician's business, Ollie Quinn.

Looking ahead, what do you hope to achieve as a team over the next 12 months?

The legal frameworks that we advise on are heavily impacted by social, economic and political trends.

One of Labour’s key pledges during the election was to kickstart a large-scale reform of UK employment law within the first 100 days of gaining power. We’re definitely in a big period of change and uncertainty and we’re very focused on keeping our clients up to speed as far as we can and ahead of the game. Most recently, the Government set out its wish list of employment reforms in the form of the Employment Rights Bill, where much of the changes coming into force in 2025 and 2026. Liz Cotton has just penned a piece for The Grocer on how the Employment Rights Bill 2024 will affect supermarkets, while I sat down with the business editor of South West Business Insider recently to share insights on the employment trends that will shape the business landscape in 2025.

A longer-term trend is the focus of employers on reputational management and ensuring they maintain a strong employee brand both internally and externally, and we will be there to advise and guide our clients on this. Further ongoing recruitment will be a big part of building on our success. Following the addition of our Birmingham employment law team this year, we recently recruited Anna Beggan, the former head of employment at Tughans, as legal director in Belfast and David Bryden has joined us in Glasgow as a Managing Associate.