Employment law advice for business owners

I give legal advice to companies on their employment issues, including whether and how to dismiss someone, how to run a redundancy, what the contract lets you do, and when a settlement agreement is the better route. My clients are mostly owner-managed businesses in England and Wales, from small local firms to companies with a hundred or more employees, and the person who gets in touch is usually the owner or the HR manager.

I qualified in 2008 and have advised employers throughout. These days the employment work sits alongside my main work on business sales and purchases, and there’s a fair amount of overlap between the two.

Legal advice and hands-on HR

Hands-on HR is best dealt with by HR people. Chairing the disciplinary hearing, writing up the notes, managing someone back from long-term sickness and keeping the absence records are all things which an HR consultant does well and for less than I would charge. If you haven’t got one I can suggest some.

What I add is the legal advice at the points where it matters. Before you start a process, I’ll tell you what your reason for dismissal is in legal terms and whether it stands up, and during it I’ll look at the letters that could end up in front of a tribunal. If the employee raises a grievance halfway through or goes off sick, I’ll advise on what that changes. Your HR person can run the process with me advising in the background, which tends to be the most cost-effective way of doing it.

Dismissing someone fairly

The old version of this page said that dismissing an employee was easy as long as you followed the process. I wouldn’t put it like that now because, although the process matters a great deal, it’s only part of what a tribunal looks at.

For an ordinary unfair dismissal claim, a tribunal asks whether you had one of the potentially fair reasons (conduct, capability, redundancy, a legal bar on the person doing the job, or some other substantial reason) and whether dismissing for that reason was within the range of responses open to a reasonable employer, including how you went about it. Following your own procedure and the Acas code is a large part of that, but even a flawless process won’t rescue a decision which no reasonable employer would have made.

Some claims don’t depend on process at all, as discrimination because of any of the nine protected characteristics in section 4 of the Equality Act 2010 (age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation) can be claimed from day one, and so can dismissal for whistleblowing or for asserting a statutory right. Those are the claims I ask about first, as they’re where the larger awards are.

Gross misconduct can justify dismissal without notice, though you still need to investigate and hear the employee out first. In any other case you give notice or pay in lieu. Redundancy has its own requirements on selection, consultation and looking for alternatives, and they apply even when it’s one person, which I’ve written about in making one person redundant.

Changes under the Employment Rights Act 2025

This area of law is changing, so please treat this section as correct at October 2026 and check before relying on it.

At the moment an employee generally needs two years’ service to claim ordinary unfair dismissal (section 108 of the Employment Rights Act 1996). That falls to six months where the employment ends on or after 1 January 2027, even if notice was given before then, and the cap on the compensatory award (currently the lower of £123,543 or 52 weeks’ pay) is removed for the same dismissals. Both changes are made by section 25 of the Employment Rights Act 2025 and the regulations bringing it into force. From then it will no longer be safe to let someone go at eighteen months without much thought, and the probation period becomes the time to make decisions.

One change which has already happened is that, since 1 October 2026, most tribunal claims can be brought within six months instead of three (where the dismissal or other event complained of happened on or after that date), and I’ve explained what that means for employers in my article on tribunal time limits from October 2026. Other parts of the Act are being phased in. The duty to prevent sexual harassment of your staff becomes a duty to take all reasonable steps, and you become liable for harassment by third parties such as customers, on 30 October 2026. The government’s published timetable has the fire and rehire rules planned for January 2027 and the zero-hours measures for some time in 2027, but neither date is in legislation yet and they may move, so I advise on the rules as they stand at the time.

Contracts, handbooks and settlement agreements

Most employment problems are easier to deal with if the paperwork is decent. I draft employment contracts, director service agreements and staff handbooks for a fixed fee, and a lot of the advice I give on dismissals starts with reading what the contract and the disciplinary policy say.

Where an agreed exit makes more sense than a process, I advise on settlement agreements, which includes whether to offer one, how to raise it without losing the protection for those conversations, how much to offer and what the agreement should say.

Employment issues on a business sale

If you’re buying or selling a business, the employees are part of the deal, and this is where the employment work and my main work come together. On an asset sale they usually transfer automatically to the buyer under TUPE, on their existing terms, and both sides have duties to inform and consult. On a share sale the employer doesn’t change, but the buyer will still want warranties about the workforce and will read the contracts of the key people closely.

Sellers often ask when to tell the staff, and I’ve written about how to inform employees you’re selling. The other common questions are how to keep key employees through the sale, and what the seller’s own service agreement or consultancy should look like afterwards.

Employment tribunal claims

I don’t defend employment tribunal claims. If you’ve received a claim form, or Acas has been in touch about early conciliation, send it to me promptly anyway, because the deadline for responding is short. I’ll read it, work out which of my Nexa colleagues is the right fit (taking into account the type of claim, their capacity and their pricing) and introduce you. They’ll run the defence and quote their own fee. All of my work, and theirs, is carried out through Nexa Law Limited, which is authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

Fees and next steps

For a one-off issue I quote a fixed fee once I’ve seen the details, with the scope in writing before I start. New clients pay an ID check of £30 plus VAT per director or shareholder.

If you’d find yourself asking for employment advice several times a year, along with contracts and company questions, my annual subscription is likely to suit you better. It covers day-to-day advice, including employment, for one fixed annual fee.

If you’d like my advice, get in touch and send me the details, which means who the employee is, how long they’ve been with you, what has happened and what you’d like to do about it. The contract and any letters already sent are the most useful things to attach.