Philip is a solicitor in our Employment Team.
Philip joined Machins in August 2021 and is a solicitor in the Employment team. He studied law at Coventry University before completing the Legal Practice Course at the University of Law in Birmingham.
Prior to joining Machins, Philip trained with a Bedfordshire firm.
He takes a pragmatic approach in his matters in order to ensure that both employees and employers know what is in their best interests going forward.
Millions of employees now have the right to request flexible working to determine where and when they work. The new rights are part of the Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Bill, which came into effect on 6 April. Flexible working is a broad term and can relate to working hours or pattern including part-time, term-time, flexi-time,
It has been widely reported this week in the mainstream media that a couple had their divorce finalised in error following a mistake by solicitors which a senior judge has refused to overturn. The couple were separated and had applied for a divorce which had reached conditional order stage of the divorce. It would appear
Termination of Parental Responsibility is rarely made by the Court and only ever in exceptional circumstances. Following a recent private family law case acting for a mother who successfully obtained a termination of Parental Responsibility order to end the father’s Parental Responsibility, we asked Laura Martin-Read, Senior Associate Solicitor to explain what Parental Responsibility is
Jeremy Hunt delivered his Spring Budget on 6 March, and it will probably be his last major fiscal announcement ahead of this year’s anticipated general election. With a focus on reducing tax for the working population and helping parents, there were several announcements in the Budget that affect businesses and employees which I consider and
The government has unveiled a series of employment law reforms aimed at boosting the economy and reducing costs for businesses. The measures include changes to the Working Time Regulations 1998, the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations (TUPE), and non-compete clauses. The measures are set out in the policy paper ‘Smarter Regulation to Grow
The law on redundancy can seem complex and demanding to an employer. When making staff redundant, employers need to ensure that they follow a fair process that recognizes an employee’s rights while also seeking to achieve the organization’s goals in making the redundancy in the first place (e.g. saving cost). Throughout the redundancy process, the employer
The Employment Tribunal has ruled that a civil servant who was sacked after she looked up her neighbour’s private data on a government database was not unfairly dismissed. The case involved Louise Kelly, who said her behaviour had been caused by a lack of Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT). Kelly had worked for the Department of
The employment tribunal decision in Furlong v The Chief Constable of Cheshire Police reminds employers that the ‘tie-breaker’ exemption should not be used as a blanket policy to favour underrepresented groups with shared protected characteristics in a recruitment selection process. Doing so would amount to unlawful discrimination under the Equality Act 2010. In this case, a well-intentioned police
I have less than two years’ employment. Can my employer dismiss me without a reason? Employees can only usually claim unfair dismissal against an employer if they have a minimum of two years’ service. However, there are exceptions to this rule. If an employee is able to establish an automatically unfair or discriminatory reason for