Lee Bronze

Employment

Specialising in Employment law, Lee has some 15 years’ experience in the UK Tribunals, representing both employees and employers at first instance and appeal level.  He has considerable experience dealing with matters involving trade unions.

He deals with all manners of employment cases including non-contentious drafting and advice work to advocacy in the Employment Tribunal (offering nationwide coverage) and the Employment Appeals Tribunal.  His work has been recognised in the Legal 500 guide and as a result is named as a “key lawyer” for employment litigation in the northwest.

Lee coves all areas of employment law but chief among his specialisms are:

– Unfair dismissal including constructive dismissal and redundancy matters
– Discrimination including on the grounds of gender, disability, religion, race/ ethnicity and sexual orientation.
– Equal Pay
– Protected disclosures (“whistleblowing”)
– Trade union law
– Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) and all related TUPE matters
– Protective Awards
– Deductions from wages
– Holiday Pay
– Harassment and victimisation
– National Minimum Wage
– Breach of Contract and Notice Pay.

He counts qualified legal practitioners (solicitors including employment law specialists, barristers and a judge) as clients who trust him to advise and represent themselves personally.  Lee has acted for and against a significant number of household names claims in relation to the BBC, most global high street banks, national supermarkets, governmental departments and agencies, local authorities, accountancy firms and solicitor firms themselves as well as small boutique firms only employing a handful of people.  Lee has considerable experience acting for vulnerable clients including those with learning disabilities.

Cases Lee has been involved with have attracted national press coverage and been debated in Parliament.

NOTABLE CASES

Claimant / Employee Cases

O v HM Prison Service

Settled at ADR a case for a 6 figure sum for an employee who suffered harassment and victimisation despite the employer calling over 20 witnesses against Lee’s client.

E v Sky Subscriber Services

Won an unfair dismissal award against the media giant which hit the statutory cap for the maximum award payable to the employee.

S v NHS Trust

Lee represented a claimant who had been harassed by colleagues on the grounds of his race. The Judgement referred to Lee as exhibiting a “meticulous cross-examination” of the 8 witnesses he was against.  The matter required delicate handling as Lee’s client still shared an office with his colleagues whilst the claim was ongoing. At the Remedies Hearing, Lee successfully persuaded the Tribunal to take the fairly unusual step of awarding aggravated damages against the employer.

T & others v FF

Represented a group of some 30 employees against a national manufacturing company who engaged a leading employment law silk (KC) in a contractual redundancy dispute listed for 5 days and which went on to be appealed to the EAT.

V v W County Borough Council

Successfully settled after being instructed to represent around 600 claimants on a mass equal pay claim against a local authority on a 6-week hearing.

T v J

Claimed and secured reinstatement for an employee who had been dismissed for gross misconduct from an international company.

L v Local Authority

Won a claim for an employee caught up in child abuse allegations as part of the National Crime Agency investigation lasting years.

Respondent/ Employer Cases

E v National Law Firm

Successfully defended a claim of sexual assault brought by a solicitor against a household name national law firm which employed over 1,000 people.  This case also involved a KC (silk).

S v R

Represented one of Manchester’s celebrity owned restaurants when it faced multiple “whistleblowing claims” brought under the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998. Lee managed to have the majority of the claim struck out at an early preliminary stage to make the claim far more commercially manageable whilst the remainder settled for a negligible sum.

C v MW

Managed to persuade the Tribunal that an employer’s defence to a disability discrimination claim should be accepted out of time and even have the employee withdraw some of her claims before the trial preparation had properly started.

S v CH

Helped achieve settlement for a hotel chain in Scotland facing a whistleblowing claim before trial at a very difficult juncture for the employer as there was also extremely sensitive commercial negotiations taking place at the time in relation to the whole business organisation.

Reported Cases

Henderson v Connect (South Tyneside) Ltd EAT/0209/09, [2010] IRLR 466.

A leading case on third party pressure and the difficulties employers can face when dealing with allegations about their staff.

Remploy Ltd v Abbott and others UKEAT/0405/14.

One of the foremost authorities on Tribunal case management and lists of issues and whether employees can raise new matters not in the pleadings.

Bury MBC v Hamilton and Sutherland City Council v Brennan

Equal Pay Claim involving over 1,000 employees.

Regulatory and Professional Discipline

Lee works in the field of medical regulation and has appeared at various hearings in relation to interim order panels and fitness to practise hearings. Having significant regulatory experience in other areas and having successfully represented a police force before, Lee is continuing to expand his experience in police misconduct hearings.

Education Law and Special Educational Needs

Lee is the Deputy Head of the Education Law and SEND Group. Combining neatly with his other specialisms, Lee undertakes first instance Tribunal work and appeal work. He has acted for people with various disabilities including over the course of a couple of years over a hundred people who were employed by Remploy.

Associations

Employment Lawyers Association

Education

LLB (Hons), Manchester University

BVC, Nottingham Law School

Prescribed Information

Mr Lee Bronze is a practising barrister, who is regulated by the Bar Standards Board. Details of information held by the BSB about Mr Bronze can be found here.

Mr Bronze’s clerks will happily provide no obligation quotations for all legal services that he provides. Their contact details can be found here. It is most common for Mr Bronze to undertake Court and advisory work for a fixed fee or brief fee plus refresher days. For any advisory work, paperwork and conferences it is most commonly charged at an hourly rate, although fixed fees are available. Mr Bronze also accepts instructions on legal aid rates where those are available, details of which can be found here. Mr Bronze will typically return paperwork within 21 days, however professional commitments, complexity and volume of documentation can affect these approximate timescales.

Mr Bronze also undertakes Direct Access work. This work is undertaken on a contractual basis agree, as between the client and Mr Bronze’s clerks. This is on fixed fee basis for a specific events such as a conference, advisory work, a hearing with additional hearing days (refreshers) or the drafting of specific documents. All work agreed to be undertaken by Mr Bronze with the fixed fee cost will be clearly outlined in the direct access contract signed by the client and will be payable in full prior to the commencement of the work.