An employment law partner within Eversheds Sutherland’s Employment, Labour and Pensions Group, Mark has focused on employment law since qualifying in 1994 and has been a partner since 2005.
As an employer, Mark can advise you across the full range of employment and labor issues globally. This includes the people aspects of transactions, having worked on hundreds of outsourcing and corporate deals. Mark has many years’ experience helping clients taking a commercial approach to the challenges of TUPE. Mark has worked on cross border and UK only deals.
Mark advises extensively on engagement and misclassification issues, assisting clients to navigate the evolving case law and legislation on status. Mark works with clients managing their contingent workforces on issues such as the IR35 off payroll tax reforms, the Agency Workers Regulations and the Employment Businesses/Agencies Conduct regulations which apply in the UK to staffing companies and their customers.
Mark can helps employers resolve difficult workplace issues such as executive terminations, National Minimum Wage compliance, complex disciplinary and grievance matters (including matters involving whistle blowing and relationship breakdown).
He has led complex restructuring and reorganisation projects, including in the context of insolvency.
Whilst Mark has a breadth of experience across sectors, he has particular experience in our Diversified Industrials sector including in construction, transport (rail) and infrastructure. He has also advised local authorities and central government bodies on complex cases and transactions.
Mark has inputted into various government consultations and supported leading business and industry bodies on, for example, the response to the Covid-19 pandemic and contingent workers reforms.
Latest Insights
- Mark has recently returned from a 9 month secondment to a global technology company and acted on a number of major transactions and matters for both private and public sector clients, including:
- helping an infrastructure client on the outsourcing and insourcing of various design and maintenance activities, including in a regulated environment
- working with an energy sector client on the retendering of IT support across its estate, again involving a mix of insourcing of core workstreams and outsourcing from an incumbent supplier, resolving issues of alignment of people to workstreams/suppliers
- working on hundreds of UK and cross border acquisitions, coordinating advice where worker misclassification for labor and tax purposes was in point
- leading the Firm’s response to the IR35 employment tax reforms, helping clients review their contingent/off payroll workforce, hiring processes and template documentation
- representing large local authorities on equal pay ‘class actions’
- working on almost all of the private to public staff transfers in the rail sector
- advising a construction sector client on a series of restructuring projects over many years, having developed a very close knowledge of their businesses
- supporting public bodies on the employment aspects of high profile disciplinary cases including where the senior employee was accused of criminal behaviour.
Mark has presented hundreds of times at various public and client conferences and events across the world. He has delivered the ACAS (the UK public body which supports resolution of workplace issues) TUPE Conference for several years and has written modules on contingent workers for legal publishers.
Mark is a member of the Employment Lawyers Association, delivering training to junior lawyers on subjects such as TUPE.
LLB (Hons) Law, 1988-1991.